[freeside-users] Q1: Package recurring frequency - payments

John (yt) Hogenmiller ytjohn at gmail.com
Tue Oct 10 09:39:37 PDT 2006


I'm currently looking at using Freeside for our ISPs' billing system.
I have managed to get it installed, provisioning to my radius and
email servers, and I have also got the selfservice portion working,
services packages defined, several test customers in place.  In many
ways, it matches our requirements better than Billmax or Modernbill
(both of which I've looked at extensively).  Currently, we use a
home-brewed system for billing our users and receiving payments.

Each customer is subscribed to a pricing plan, which is similiar to,
yet different than Freeside's package.  However, we allow the customer
to pay 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months at a time.
Essentially, the plans are arranged in groups, and they can switch to
any plan in the group at pretty much any time.

In Freeside, I can create packages, but as far as I can tell, each
package is set to one specific recurring frequency.  When a customer
makes a payment, I'd like them to be able to decide how many months
they are going to pay for.

I think that the simplest solution that requires the least amount of
"programming" is to display the amounts for each time period to the
customer.  If they pay based off of their existing package, then
everything is instant.  If they are setup for quarterly and only pay
one month (changing their payment terms), then they will just have to
wait until someone looks at their payment, changes their package, and
applies the payment.  If they pay more, they're still fine, someone
just needs to adjust their package and apply the payment.

First off, does that scenario sound reasonable, or is there a way for
Freeside to offer the customer different payment terms for a package
(or switching a package while keeping their services)?

Secondly, if we go with this scenario, can someone point me to how I
can display the appropriate packages for that customer in the
selfservice system?
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