Engage Voice | Understanding your billing usage report
Last updated on June 30, 2021
This article discusses how to read your billing reports in Historical dashboards, and understanding how it relates to your invoice.
Read Billing Period Overview to understand the metrics included in a billing report.
Start with Intro to billing and read the whole topic under Billing to understand your invoice.
Reading your invoice
To understand how the Billing Period Overview in Historical dashboards relates to your invoice, we’ll use an invoice with usage charges being billed for in arrears as an example.
For invoices with no on-demand charges, see Invoice 1 in Understanding your invoice.
Typically, an invoice with on-demand charges will have three sections. The Statement Summary section lists charges and totals the amount due. The second section (not seen in the screenshot) contains your account information as well as payment methods you may select from.
The Statement Details section has the statement details that itemizes your subscription charges. This will include, depending on your contract, prepaid seats as well as overage or on-demand seats.
Reading the Billing Period Overview Report
To access the Billing Period Overview Report, click on the Analytics service icon upon login, then navigate to Historical dashboards > Standard > Billing Period Overview. Set the billing interval by clicking on the Billing Interval button on the upper left, then select the date interval of the report to match the date interval of your invoice.
In our example above, the invoice date is 06/01/2021. This means the data you want to see on your report should be under the 04/30/2021 to 05/31/2021 date interval. Note that sometimes, there may be a difference between the invoice date and the reporting date due to timezone conversion.
There are three sections in the Billing Period Overview report: Billing Period Summary, Usage Summary, and Usage Details.
Billing Period Summary
The Billing Period Summary section provides the billing period summary for the selected billing period(s) on the main account level. This section has three more subsections.
- Billing Interval Package: Provides information about the package used in a billing period.
- Prepaid Summary: Provides details on prepaid package licenses. Details include licenses, categories, and license quantity.
- Postpaid Summary: Provides details on postpaid licenses in case of a closed billing period. Details include licenses, categories, and license quantity.
Usage Summary
The Usage Summary section provides detailed information on usage categories. The breakdown is by sub-account with measured units, count, and duration.
Note: Some categories will not be reported for an open billing period.
Usage Details
The Usage Details section provides usage information by product (IVR or queue) and DNIS for applicable categories.
Comparing your invoice to billing reports
In comparing your invoice to billing reports, you need to go to the Statement Details section of your invoice for a more detailed breakdown of your usage.
Prepaid licenses
Prepaid licenses will have a start date and end date. In the Billing Period Overview report, go to Billing Period Summary > Prepaid Summary, and you will see these prepaid licenses listed.
Postpaid licenses
Postpaid licenses are overage or on-demand services. These licenses are billed at a higher rate compared to prepaid licenses. All other items in the Statement Details section of your invoice that are not prepaid licenses can be found listed under Billing Period Summary > Postpaid Summary of your Billing Period Overview report.
Reading Usage Summary and Usage Details sections
You’ll notice that you can find your licenses in the Statement Details section of your invoice precisely as they are written in the Prepaid and Postpaid Summary sections of your billing report. To understand how those overage seats are computed, you can use the Usage Summary and the Usage Details section of the Billing Period Overview report.
The Prepaid and Postpaid Summary sections separate prepaid and postpaid licenses, respectively. However, licenses are also assigned categories defined as usage of services or resources. In the Usage Summary section, all categories are listed regardless of their prepay or postpay status.
In our example invoice and billing report, you’ll see 15 named agent seats in the prepaid section (See ‘Engage Voice Inbound Edition, named agent seat’). In the postpaid section, you’ll find four on-demand equivalents of the same service (See ‘Engage Voice Inbound Edition, named agent seat on demand,’ categorized as ‘Named Core Seat’).
In the Usage Summary section of your billing report, you’ll find that both prepaid and postpaid named agent seats are aggregated into the same category. Together, they are listed as 19 Named Core Seats.
Compare this to your invoice. In the Statement Details section, you’ll be charged for four on-demand seats on top of your 15 recurring, prepaid charges.
Helpful hint!
Note: Prepaid charges are for the following month and not for the current billing period, meaning the four on-demand seats were computed as overage uses from the 15 seats you already paid the previous month.
Lastly, the Usage Details section of your billing report will itemize all calls or products used, listing the DNIS and minutes of each call or product duration. Each category in the Usage Summary section will be broken down into each call or product usage in Usage Details.
It is possible to drill down into the measures of both Usage Summary and Usage Details to see the usage broken down by day.
It is possible to drill down into the measures of both Usage Summary and Usage Details to see the usage broken down by day.
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