What Is A billing System?

Answer 1

A 'Billing System'* is a combination of a software application/s and Database/s designed too take customer information regarding charges to be made to that customer. This is not specific to any industry and there are many types of billing systems from simple one off invoicing of products and services, which you experience everyday when you enter a shop and purchases products or pay to get carpets cleaned, to receiving monthly bills for Utilities and Telecommunications Services, as examples. These include fixed reoccurring charge (Line Rental, Fixed Monthly Broadband or Sky TV Charge), one-off charges (Mobile Handset, Modem, SkyBox, Even that Termination Charge for breaking the contract). These are all examples of types of charges which a billing system will process and calculate into the invoice which you receive either by post or possibly via email. A feature of most modern billing systems is the ability to have different payment options, such as Direct Debit. You are still billed each month and the Billing System may still produce an invoice, but payment is taken direct from your Bank Account or Credit Card.

With the store example billing system, it just inputs and lists one-off product information, listing each item and cost then totalling them on the bottom, producing an invoice or receipt. With Utilities and Telecoms the basic same concept applies, except rather than 2 shirts and 1 pair of socks, the products also include what is also known as services. (2 Telephone Lines and 1 Broadband connection) Which the billing system knows to bill you each month.

*Assumes reference to a computerised billing system and not a manual one.

Answer 2

Billing systems process the usage of network equipment that is used during the service usage into a single Call Detail Record (CDR). The billing process involves receiving billing records from various networks, determining the billing rates associated with the billing records, calculating the cost for each billing record, aggregating these records periodically to generate invoices, sending invoices to the customer, and collecting payments received from the customer.