Charge is where the rating and charging process occurs.

Charge contains two main objects. When we create a Charge, in the Decision Tree structure, you will see the Charging Plan and the Price Plan.

Charging Plan handles the charging process. While Price Plan contains the pricing logic and calculation algorithm in the rating process. In the illustration below, there are other objects that exist within the Charge that is essential to provide the rating and charging process. However, let’s just focus on the Charge for now.

To create a new Charge, at the Core Tool click File->New->Charge

Choose the Owner of your catalog, select the ‘[T01] Mobile Telephony’ chargeable item package, click on Add selected and then on Create.

Note: The Charge must be linked to a CIP.

At the new Charge, you can observe on the tree structure, there are two main branches. At the top is the Charging Plan. The one below without any description is the Price Plan.

As a Name of your charge, enter ‘[T01] Mobile Recurring Charge’.

At the definition tab of the Charge, there are 4 main settings that you can make.

First, determine if the Charge is a Master Charge or a Dependent Charge. A Call, SMS or Data Charges are usually the Master Charge. A Commission Charge is an example of a Dependent Charge.

Note: To trigger the Dependent Charge from the Master Charge, the Dependent Charge  must have the same rating type (either Usage Base, Occurrence or One Shot rate) as the Master Charge.

Second, set the currency definition.

Third, you can add the persistence counter.

Forth, is the CIP information of the Charge.

The Parameters tab allows you to create variables that can be used to hold information.