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Billing overview

This page explains the basic concepts about billing in Cloud Intelligence ChannelOps service.

Chain of responsibility​

Distributors, Resellers, and End Customers form a tiered chain of responsibility in accordance with the tenant hierarchy:

  • Distributors define the base pricing via contracts and price books.

  • Resellers inherit the pricing by the distributor and adjust it before offering to end customers.

  • End customers are billed according to the active reseller contract and the associated price book.

Billing elements​

Contracts are the single source of truth for all configurations used by the recalculation and invoicing processes. Price books, billing rules, and custom line items make up the operational pricing layer that defines rates calculation.

  • The distributor creates a contract and generates a base price book according to the provider rates.

  • The reseller accepts the contract and thus inherits the base price book, and then applies adjustments.

  • The end customer accepts the reseller's contract, and the billing system references the linked price books, billing rules, and custom line items to calculate invoice line items.

In short:

  • Contracts define who is billed and under what terms.

  • Billing rules determine which cost types are excluded.

  • Price books set rules for specific rates and conditions based on billing data dimensions.

  • Custom Line Items (CLIs) allow partners to add manual adjustments or charges, including taxes, that flow through analytics and invoicing to ensure data alignment.

Together, these elements ensure accurate, auditable billing across Distributor, Reseller, and End-Customer tiers.

Billing adjustments order​

Billing adjustments are applied in the following order: Billing rules -> Price books -> Custom line items

Currency​

Currency is defined at the Billing Profile level. Contracts and price books are currency-agnostic.

The current implementation supports only USD for Billing Profiles.

Audit and version control​

Any changes (new rates, renewals, or corrections) result in new contract and price book versions, keeping full audit and historical traceability, and ensuring pricing accuracy, transparency, and predictable downstream propagation across tiers.

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