Revision as of 08:59, 7 March 2013

Introduction

About

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_1.html ?

AGPL now, and MySQL is also supported

Navigation and Preferences

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_2.html

Customers, Packages and Services

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_3.html

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_4.html (simple case: single package and service)

Prospects

Adding prospcts

Searching for prospects

Prospect view

Qualifications

If you have any qualification-capable services configured, you may perform qualifications using the "New Qualification" link. Previously-performed qualifications may be viewed from "View Qualifications". See Package Qualifications for details.

Customers

Adding customers

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_5.html

Searching for customers

Customer view

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_6.html

Actions

Edit customer

Cancel customer

Refer customer

View customer's referrals

Bill now

Comments / Notes

Comments

Notes

Tickets

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_7.html

Packages

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_11.html

Qualifications

If you have any qualification-capable services configured, you may perform qualifications using the "New Qualification" link under Packages, and then choosing the "Qualify using" field appropriately and filling out the form.

Previously-performed qualifications may be viewed from "View Qualifications".

Notes specific to New Qualification for Ikano:

1. An address is always required
2. Location Type may be only one of the fixed Ikano values - see their documentation
3. Location Kind must always be chosen
4. Dry loops - always leave "Service Telephone Number" empty
5. Line-share (non dry loops) - always fill in "Service Telephone Number"

Notes specific to qualification results / viewing previous qualifications for Ikano:

1. The view qualification page will show all possible packages in Freeside which you can order, based on the customer data which was qualified
2. Click on the package to order

Services

Accounts

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_12.html

Domains

Mail Forwards

Virtual hosting

Broadband

Phone numbers

External

DSL

Ikano-specific notes:

• New Orders

1. Perform a qualification (see Qualifications above)
2. Order one of the qualifying packages shown on the qualification result and set the start date and location on this package appropriately
3. For dry loops, leave the Service Telephone Number blank and choose the "Standalone" Loop Type
4. For line-share (non dry-loops), always fill in the Service Telephone Number and choose the "Line-share" Loop Type

• Viewing DSL Orders - click on the service to view all order data, including notes placed on the order by Ikano or you via their web portal
• Canceling DSL Orders
  • A NEW order in NEW or PENDING statuses may be canceled immediately - do a normal "Cancel now" on the package
  • A NEW order in COMPLETED status may be canceled by expiring the package - do a normal "Cancel later" on the package with a cancel date at least 48 hours in future
• Changing PPPoE password - edit the service and change the password
• Suspending and unsuspending - do a normal Suspend Now or Unsuspend on the package
• Processes not supported currently (use the Ikano web interface for now):
  • Canceling NEW orders in any status other than NEW, PENDING, or COMPLETED
  • Anything involving CHANGE orders - e.g. changing the package/service, canceling a change/move, performing a move
  • Aborting cancellations (unexpiring packages) while a CANCEL order is in NEW or PENDING status
  • Syncing an order's disconnect or activation date to the package dates
• Due to Ikano's API, it will not be possible to place notes on an order from Freeside, so this cannot be implemented

Taxation

The tax editor can be located at: Configuration -> Billing -> Locales and Tax rates. Taxes work at the City, County and State level. Add your cities and counties to the state you operate in. Use "Add new tax to selected" option at the bottom of the screen to add a tax to multiple locations at the same time. Setup and recurring fees can be exempted in both the tax rate editor and in the package definitions giving you flexibility in your tax configuration. The option in the package definitions are labeled as: "Setup fee tax exempt" or "Recurring fee tax exempt". By default taxes are billed according to customers Billing address. This can be changed to the service address by enabling tax-ship_address in Configuration -> Settings. When taxes are billed, only the taxes matching the specific section in the tax table will be applied. Example: If we define several taxes at the state level then add a new county or city the state level taxes will not be inherited, meaning ONLY the taxes in the customers specific match for state/county/city will be billed.

Advanced Tax Configuration

Per package tax classes can be enabled in Configuration -> Settings, the option is labeled enable_taxclasses. This allows the system to have a tax class which can be assigned to package definitions to determine which taxes should get billed. The tax editor will now have a Separate Tax Class link which will break a certain locality into one more tax classes. Tax classes can be configured by going to Configuration -> Billing -> Tax classes.

WA State Tax Districts

Washington state sales tax is not billed via county or city, but by tax district. Freeside can query an API to determine a customer's tax district. This features requires tax_district_method to be enabled in Configuration -> Settings by setting the configuration to Washington Sales Tax. All new customers will now have their tax district set when they are added to the system. Note: The tax district query is a queued process so it may take a few moments for this to populate after the customer has been added to the system. The command freeside-tax-district-update can be ran from the commandline backend to populate the tax rates for the districts in the state of Washington. This will also update any tax districts for customers already in the system which currently do not have a tax district assigned.

Payment history and actions

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_13.html

Invoices

Invoices are generated by the system. The charges on each invoice reflect the setup/one-time, recurring and usage charges of that customer's packages. Invoices increase the customer's balance.

To add new packages or charges to a customer, use the "Order new package" or "One-time charge" links in the Packages section of the Customer View page.

To generate a pending invoice for a customer, use the "Bill now" link at the top of the Customer View page.

Payments

Payments are money the customer pays. Payments decrease the customer's balance.

Check and Cash payments

• To post a check or cash payment, use the "Enter check payment" or "Enter cash payment" links at the top of the Payment History section of the customer view page.
  • Enter the amount of the payment.
  • For check payments, enter the check number.
  • Leave "Auto-apply to invoices" set to "yes" if you would like the system to apply the payment to any open invoices (oldest first). Or change "Auto-apply to invoices" to "no" if you would like to apply the payment to invoice(s) (or refund(s)) manually.

• Multiple check payments can also be entered in a batch under Tools -> Quick Payment Entry.

Credit card and electronic check (ACH) payments

• Credit card or electronic check payments will be initiated by the system for customers with Billing Type "Credit card (automatic)" or "Electronic Check (automatic)".

• Payments can be initiated manually by using the "Process credit card payment" or "Process electronic check (ACH) payment" links, in the Payment History section of the customer view page.
  • Enter the amount to process (defaults to the customer's current outstanding balance).
  • For credit card payments, enter the card number, expiration date, name on card and billing address. If the customer has a card on-file, the masked card number ("4111xxxxxxxx1111") and other information can be left as-is to charge the on-file card.
  • For electronic check payments, enter the account number, account type, ABA or routing number, and bank name (other information such as bank state, social security number, or driver's license number may also be required by some payment gateways). If the customer has electronic checking information on-file, the masked account number and other information can be left as-is to charge the on-file bank account.
  • Check "Remember this information" to save the payment information on-file.
  • Also check "Charge future payments to this credit card/electronic check automatically" to charge the customer automatically in the future.

• Customers may use the self-service interface to pay by credit card or electronic check themselves.

Payment application

• Payments are applied to a specific invoice (or split between multiple invoices).
• The "(apply)" and "(unapply)" links next to specific payment (in the Payment History section of the customer view page) can be used to change the application of payments to specific invoice(s) and/or refunds(s).

Credits

Credits are adjustments to the amount the customer owes. Credits decrease the customer's balance.

• To post a credit, use the "Enter credit" link at the top of the Payment History section of the customer view page.
  • Enter the amount to credit.
  • Select the reason for the credit or enter a new reason.
  • Leave "Auto-apply to invoices" set to "yes" if you would like the system to apply the credit to any open invoices (oldest first). Or change "Auto-apply to invoices" to "no" if you would like to apply the credit to invoice(s) (or refund(s)) manually.

• Like payments, credits can be applied to an invoice (or split between multiple invoices). For example, a credit to reverse an incorrect invoice or write off an invoice as bad debt could be applied to that specific invoice.
• Credits can also be applied to refunds to indicate that the credit was refunded to the customer instead.
• The "(apply)" and "(unapply)" links next to specific credits (in the Payment History section of the customer view page) can be used to change the application of credits to specific invoice(s) and/or refunds(s).

Refunds

Refunds are money paid to the customer. Refunds increase the customer's balance.

Check and Cash refunds

• Posting refunds
• Applying and unapplying refunds.

Credit card and electronic check (ACH) refunds

• To refund a specific credit card or electronic check (ACH) payment back to the customer, use the "(refund)" link next to that specific payment (in the Payment History section of the customer view page). This will process a refund for the amount of the payment with the payment gateway.

Employees and permissions

Freeside has a comprehensive set of ACL's which can be applied to Employees (Anyone accessing the system). Additional Employees can be setup by going to Configuration -> Employees -> Employees. Most of the fields should be self-explanatory. The Customer field allows you to link an employee to a customer account allowing commission credits to be applied to their customer account. See Commissions for more information regarding employee commissions.

Basic Employee Groups

An employee group, configured under Employee -> Employee Groups can define a set of ACL's which are applied to the employee when logging in. There are a variety of different permissions to allow or disallow just about any operation within Freeside. Examples: ACL's can be used to stop technical employees from seeing accounting data or to disallow accounting employees from changing passwords.

Advanced Employee Groups

ACL's are inherited meaning a single employee can have more than one Employee group. This functionality is useful when Freeside is being used as a multi-tenant system and you want to limit certain employees to a set of ACL's but only for a certain Agent/Reseller. Example: Lets say you have 3 companies or resellers in your system each with their own employees. You can create an empty employee group with no ACL's and only defining the agent which the employee can access. You may also have 3 differnet levels of employee access. In this example we would create 3 employee groups with NO ACL's attached and only defining the particular agent to be accessed and 3 different employee groups with the various levels of access, but no agent/resellers defined. When creating a new employee you would configure them to have the agent based employee group and the permissions base employee group giving them both access to the specific reseller and a specific set of permissions.

Ticketing

Link to RT documentation

New ticket

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_8.html

Ticketing Main

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_9.html

Ticket View

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_10.html

Searching and Reporting

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_14.html

Customers

• To search for a customer, enter the customer number, name, company name or contact phone number into the "Search customers" box at the top of each page. Name and company are "fuzzy" searches that will attempt to find a close match if no exact match is found.
• Other customer browsing and reporting is available from Reports -> Customers
• For advanced reporting with specific criteria, use the "Advanced" link next to the "Search customers" box at the top of each page, or go to Reports -> Customers -> Advanced customer reports

• To search for a customer by invoice number or service information (such as username, email address, domain or service phone number), use the invoice or service search, then click on the customer or "View this customer" link.

Invoices

• To search for an invoice, enter the invoice number into the "Search customers" box at the top of each page.
• Other invoice browsing and reporting is available from Reports -> Invoices
• For advanced reporting with specific criteria, use the "Advanced" link next to the "Search invoice" box at the top of each page, or go to Reports -> Invoices -> Advanced invoice reports

Packages

• Package browsing and reporting is available from Reports -> Packages
• For advanced reporting with specific criteria, go to Reports -> Packages -> Advanced package reports

FCC Form 477

Prerequisites

• visit Configuration->Settings and set cust_main-require_censustract to Yes
• visit Configuration->Packages->Package report classes and add classes to match the FCCs reporting requirements
• edit your package definitions (Configuration->Packages->Package definitions) to include some report classes

Usage

• visit Reports->Customers->Advanced customer reports to find customers lacking census tract information
• edit customers who lack census information - you should either see a popup asking for census information or it will be automatically filled when you save the customer
• visit Reports->Packages->Advanced package reports to generate reports which may filter by ALL selected "report classes" (logically ANDed)
• visit Reports->Packages->FCC Form 477 packages to generate reports collated by census tract

Additional notes

Once logged into the fcc system, one can offer it one or more files for upload via its html forms. For 'small' systems (fewer than 5000 broadband subscriptions) we support a single file upload. The size restriction is an FCC restriction on the number of lines in the XML file.

To prepare the report for upload, one must first tag package definitions with appropriate report classes. 'Appropriate' depends on context. For example, if a reporting entity must submit FCC Part IIA then the reporting entity must designate which packages contain 'unswitched UNE loops' and must tag the definitions with a report option which means this. If Part IIA is to be submitted, then each package definition must have the 'voice grade equivalency' for each package (defalt is 0). The global config cust_pkg-show_fcc_voice_grade_equivalent must be enabled to edit this.

Once the packages are tagged, useful reports may be generated. By visiting Reports->Packages->FCC Form 477 you may choose which 'parts' of the FCC form to generate (since not all parts are meaningful to all companies). In Part IA all download speeds and all upload speeds must be set meaningfully and at least one technology must be set. Part IB is not presently supported. Parts IIA and IIB depend on the ds0 equivalency number. They make use of the report options to calculate the percentage of the whole number of ds0s. All of parts I and II rely on the existance of a company name in the customer record for determining if the package is residential or not. Part III is not supported at this time. Part IV offers free form comments. Parts V and VI depend on parts II and I respectively. Only selection of their generation may be selected (and is ignored if the antecedents are missing).

After pressing the submit button, the top 'XML file' link represents a file suitable for uploading to the FCC as an XML file as long as fewer than 5000 broadband connections are being reported. Parts V and VI may also be downloaded as CSV files from links adjacent to the section. This (particularly VI) should be useful for larger entities who must perform the upload in parts.

Services

• To search for a service such as username, email address, IP address, MAC address, domain or service phone number, enter the search data into the "Search servcies" box at the top of each page.
• Other service browsing and reporting is available from Reports -> Services

Accounts

Domains

Mail Forwards

Virtual hosting

Broadband

Phone numbers

External

Usage

Tickets

• To search for a ticket, enter the ticket number, subject, or email address into the "Search tickets" box at the top of each page.
• A fulltext ticket search can also be performed by entering "fulltext:searchstring" where searchstring is the string to search for.
• For advanced reporting with specific criteria, use the "Advanced" link next to the "Search tickets" box at the top of each page.

Financial Reports

Sales, Credits and Receipts

Sales Report

Credit Report

Payment Report

Payment Batch Report

A/R Aging

Go to Reports -> Financial -> A/R aging to pull up an aging report

• Select "All customers" to pull up a report including all customers.
• Select "Customers with a balance" (the default) to pull up a report only including customers with a balance. Optionally enter a number of days to pull up a report only including customers with balances over the specified number of days old.

Prepaid income

Sales tax liability

Go to Reports -> Financial -> Sales tax liability to pull up a report of total sales and taxes, for example, to pull up numbers to add to Quickbooks or another accounting package.

• Enter start and end dates to restrict the search to a specific time period.
• Check "Show tax classes" to break down sales and taxes by tax class.
• Check "Show package classes" to break down sales and taxes by package class.

• In the resulting sales tax report, all clickable links take you to a detail report of the specific items making up the number reported.

Tools

Quick Payment Entry

Auditing Legacy Data

http://www.freeside.biz/~ivan/freeside-slides/html/slide_15.html