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Separate buy rates from sell rates
http://forum.asterisk2billing.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5116		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  sammy [ Tue Apr 07, 2009 2:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Separate buy rates from sell rates
Hello Guys,

I have just installed a2b 1.4 Trunk on a VPS for testing and I must say that the initial looks are very appealing!

It would be nice though if you all could allow the ability to separate providers rates (Buy Rate) from the rates we sell to our customers. For example. Under Providers we could have a section for uploading providers rates and we could have:

Providers Rates:

Call-labs Standard
Voipms Value
Voipms Premium
Voicetrading LCR
Voicetrading Gold

Under Callplan we could have for example:

Standard Retail
Wholesale Silver
Wholesale Gold

These plans need not be tied to a particular provider/trunk but rather be just the rates we sell to our customers instead the provider can be chosen by A2Billing by LCR. Maybe under Providers you could create different LCR groups and would be able to add our providers/trunks under those groups.

So for example we could have:

LCR group: retail
LCR group: silver
LCR group: gold

The providers that we wish to assign to the LCR routing for our retail customers would go under LCR group: retail (Voipms Value and Voice Trading LCR)

Likewise the premium providers chosen for our gold routes under LCR group: Gold (Voice Trading Gold and Voipms Premium) and so on.

This way we would have less ratecards to maintain because we just have to create one for each callplan rather than have a separate ratecard for each provider per callplan.

I hope I have explain it clearly and that it makes sense.

Keep up the good work guys!!

BTW: I couldn't resist adding a screenshot of the homepage for anyone who wants to have a peek.

regards,

Sammy

Attachments:
homepage.jpg
homepage.jpg [ 29.33 KiB | Viewed 10798 times ]
Author:  willianmazzardo [ Tue Apr 07, 2009 6:30 pm ]
Post subject: 
hi sammy,

this is not about your request. But, i`m very interested in your layout to a2b ... can you send to me your images/layout ?

thanks man :)
Author:  stavros [ Tue Apr 07, 2009 6:54 pm ]
Post subject: 
That is the default appearance of v1.4 as of few days ago, i.e. only in trunk not in the v1.4.0beta tarball
Author:  willianmazzardo [ Tue Apr 07, 2009 9:08 pm ]
Post subject: 
goood . :)

i will update and test..

thanks
Author:  areski [ Tue Apr 07, 2009 10:25 pm ]
Post subject: 
there still few things that are changing and that will be change before the stable release.

Help is welcome guys in any kind.

Cheers,
/Areski
Author:  sammy [ Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:08 am ]
Post subject: 
areski wrote:
there still few things that are changing and that will be change before the stable release.

Help is welcome guys in any kind.

Cheers,
/Areski


Areski,

I hope one of the changes would be regarding my original post......my post seem to have been hijacked.

regards,

Errol a.k.a. Sammy
Author:  areski [ Wed Apr 08, 2009 4:22 pm ]
Post subject: 
original post :

Quote:
It would be nice though if you all could allow the ability to separate providers rates (Buy Rate) from the rates we sell to our customers.


I cannot be more agree with you, actually this is *exactly* what I would love to do after finishing 1.4 plus few other stuff to build a weight (preference) on outgoing trunk,,, but those changes will never be backward compatible with 1.3x. or 1.4x.
So I think we might go for a totally different design after this release and build a bridge between them.


Cheers,
/Areski
Author:  xrg [ Wed Apr 08, 2009 4:34 pm ]
Post subject: 
areski wrote:
original post :
Quote:
It would be nice though if you all could allow the ability to separate providers rates (Buy Rate) from the rates we sell to our customers.


I cannot be more agree with you, actually this is *exactly* what I would love to do after finishing 1.4 plus few other stuff to build a weight (preference) on outgoing trunk,,, but those changes will never be backward compatible with 1.3x. or 1.4x.
So I think we might go for a totally different design after this release and build a bridge between them.



Are you really going to do that? :P

Please, Areski, please put up that version and I will be the first to download and use it!! :twisted:
Author:  areski [ Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:24 pm ]
Post subject: 
Hi,
if I recall you came up with the same solution on your version!
I don't understand then the "meaning" of your post ?
Author:  asiby [ Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:36 pm ]
Post subject: 
I was also perplexed about your post Xrg. :D

Even though this is not implemented yet, it is the only way to go if we want to make things smoother for everyone.

Cheers
Author:  xrg [ Wed Apr 08, 2009 7:18 pm ]
Post subject: 
I guess you are referring to that one, aren't you?

Attachments:
v200-sellrate.png
v200-sellrate.png [ 59.96 KiB | Viewed 10726 times ]
Author:  sammy [ Thu Apr 09, 2009 6:02 pm ]
Post subject: 
areski wrote:
original post :

I cannot be more agree with you, actually this is *exactly* what I would love to do after finishing 1.4 plus few other stuff to build a weight (preference) on outgoing trunk,,, but those changes will never be backward compatible with 1.3x. or 1.4x.
So I think we might go for a totally different design after this release and build a bridge between them.


Areski,

In my search for a good billing system for Asterisk I have had experience with a few billing systems such as Portabilling, DTL and Voipswitch over the past 6 years. I have also tried several others and they were all lacking in one way or other so we all know there is no such thing as a perfect billing solution. So I now ended backup with Asterisk & A2Billing due to the flexibility I have with codec support, protocols etc.

However, it would be good to take the best features from them all and implement into A2Billing.

Being able to separate the sell rates from the buy rates is definately a big thing for me. I had a long telephone conversation to Joe trying to find out if there was an easier way to adding the rates to the system without having to manually enter the sell rates for each prefix of the pricelist for each carrier you want to use but there isn't . :(

Some of the spreadsheets I receive from my carriers differ so much that one can have over 5000 rows and another can have 22,000 rows! So you can imagne the task of trying to match up your sell rates with each carrier. For me and I am not a developer but I think it is so much easier to just upload the buy rates from each provider into a section for providers rates then I just create a single sell rate sheet for each of my callplans - done! In the call plan I just attach those provider to the LCR routing and I can see the cost of the call as normal.

A2Billing is a great project with lots of potential and I really want see the project get bigger and better. I am going to take the initiative and put my money where my mouth is and make a contribution towards the development. Maybe it would encourage the others to follow suite since you we all developing A2Billing to make it better for us and you also need to earn a living!

Gooosh....sorry about the long post didn't realise that I waffled on that much.

regards,

Sammy
Author:  xrg [ Thu Apr 09, 2009 8:23 pm ]
Post subject: 
Sammy,
we have really seen into that problem. I apologize for disguising my messages in a way that only the core team would get.

There is *already* some design, offspring of a2billing, that has the rates separated, can easily work with 200k destinations (buy rates) in an efficient way.

I hope it will not be long until this goes mainstream.
Author:  jroper [ Fri Apr 10, 2009 11:19 am ]
Post subject: 
Hi

There are efficiency savings that can be made to ease the pain of coping with large numbers of rates, and the 80 20 rule usually applies, that you can deal with about 80% in an automated fashion, usually outside of A2Billing, but 20% still remain to look at manually.

Quite often with Carrier rates, you do discover that it is difficult to marry up their destination names with the dial codes applicable to that destination.

Additionally, you may find country specific errors, e.g. a foreign to the UK carrier may quote a rate to all 447 numbers and refer to it as UK mobile, whereas a UK carrier will be more specific and refer to 4474 to 4479 and UK mobile, and not include 4470, which is a very expensive rate.

My advice is to always go with the rate quoted by the carrier. At least you can argue from a position of strength on the basis of "That's what you quoted".

The point I was making to Sammy is that to get the nirvana or getting a set of carrier rates, squirting them into a rate table, and creating a set of retail rates from them without further manual intervention is not likely to happen in the near future, not because of any failings of programming skills, but just the way that the rates are presented to us in the first place, that manual intervention is nearly always required.

Another misguided idea (IMO) is that you can take a set of rates and simply apply an uplift to them either in terms of a percentage or a fixed amount to create your customer rate table. Again it's not that easy. Double the rates, and the cheaper ones like Europe, USA and Australia will come out fine, but do the same to a sat rate, and 5USD becomes 10USD, which is almost obscene, so to create a customer rate table from a set of carrier rates is also usually a long process.

I think that anyone who has been doing this for a while probably ends up their own set of tools, methodologies and systems which suit themselves and their skills in various programs (Excel Access, etc etc), but may not suit everyone.

Joe
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