Billing for dedicated/colo customers

[FHDave]

Hi guys,

I am just wonderring, what billing solution to use for dedicated server/colo customers? It must have a way to autmatically do billing on bandwidth overage charges (actual or 95th percentile). Anybody knows such billing software? Thank you in advance!

[Chicken]

Hmmm... that's an interesting one. Where is the data coming from? MRTG to a database of some sort? Whooo... hmmm. Have to look around, ask around.

[Everyday]

You can't do it with the hspcomplete billing you are using? Or are you only using virtuozzo?

[FHDave]

Hm, this is for Dedicated/Colo customers, not VPS customers. So not sure why HSPComplete will be useful.

Chicken, yes ... it will read traffic usage from MRTG or from some external data provided by MRTG. I am sure there is such solution. Otherwise, company like Burst.net, RackShack.net, etc will be in such a big mess just to handle billing :)

[Everyday]

Just trying to help out Dave. If the customers are using your hspcomplete system on the dedicated server then it will monitor that server for sure.

As far as the colo customers go, I believe that a couple of guys set up an alert on their mrtg. So they bill the customers using modernbill or something similar and then when an mrtg alert comes in they look at it and alter their building accordingly. I know its not automated but it works. They are measuring the bandwidth in Gigabytes to do this.

Hope that helps.

[DizixCom]

Dave,

As far as I am aware there are no canned solutions for this. I am pretty sure the only solution out there right now is to MRTG data and manually invoice the overage charges. If you read about Rackshacks mess on their billing you can see that even they aren't doing it right and for quite a long time they didn't do it at all except in rare extreme cases.

Using HSPComplete's billing system is definitely an option. With the recently added "Misc." subscription category you can add recurring charges that are not associated with a Virtual Environment, and then add the overages in manually as debit adjustments. Definitely not perfect, but it works.

For what it's worth, Rackshack uses Inovaware's solution (www.inovaware.com) and BurstNET uses Platypus (http://www.boardtown.com/platypus/default.asp)

[Everyday]

Platypus looks cool. Kind of pricey for a small company though, I guess it all depends on your needs.

If you can't bill them, they can't pay you!!!

[LetsFly]

even big companies like HE do overages manually, theres no known billing system out there that would work for a colo/ded company

[interactive]

Originally posted by FHDave
Hm, this is for Dedicated/Colo customers, not VPS customers. So not sure why HSPComplete will be useful.

Chicken, yes ... it will read traffic usage from MRTG or from some external data provided by MRTG. I am sure there is such solution. Otherwise, company like Burst.net, RackShack.net, etc will be in such a big mess just to handle billing :)
Working with php and mrtg is pretty easy. With a decent amount of php/linux knowledge you could easily do it.

[dynamicnet]

Greetings:

Check out the ISP Colo List at http://isp-lists.isp-planet.com/.

They may have already covered the topic; if not, you can always ask within the list.

Thank you.

[David]

Originally posted by interactive:

Working with php and mrtg is pretty easy. With a decent amount of php/linux knowledge you could easily do it.
Yeah, if a person can read it then so can some script.

[interactive]

True that. Welcome David by the way.

[CompCity]

It's really not that simple. Reading spikes and taking 95% is one thing, but what if you get DDoSed? Your spikes would be off the chart and that nifty autobiller would send a bill 10x as much as it should. That would make for some unhappy clients, and manually fixing them all would be a pain. It's possible, but it would intend require a very "smart" program for sure, and even then there are situations where a human would HAVE to do the billing, simply because computers aren't capable of changing based on situation. Not yet anyway :).

[David]

Originally posted by CompCity:

It's really not that simple. Reading spikes and taking 95% is one thing, but what if you get DDoSed? Your spikes would be off the chart and that nifty autobiller would send a bill 10x as much as it should. That would make for some unhappy clients, and manually fixing them all would be a pain. It's possible, but it would intend require a very "smart" program for sure, and even then there are situations where a human would HAVE to do the billing, simply because computers aren't capable of changing based on situation. Not yet anyway :).
Obviously there are always situations that are abnormal.

For yours though.
When going to bill if the bandwidth usage is substantially higher, 2 to 3 times higher then it was the previous month, the software flags the account and doesn't send the bill until someone aproves it.

[Binx]

Originally posted by FHDave:

Hi guys,

I am just wonderring, what billing solution to use for dedicated server/colo customers? It must have a way to autmatically do billing on bandwidth overage charges (actual or 95th percentile). Anybody knows such billing software? Thank you in advance!

Hi there,

I just came across your post after I asked the same basic question. We are thinking of accquiring a company that uses Modernbill as their billing solution but I am a bit concerned about billing for overage. As far as I can see it doesnt do it. Our current billing system is Optigold ISP which does allow you to import usage either per meg or gig each month. If possible I didn't want to have to transfer all of these clients over to our current system and was hoping to just keep them on Modernbill since the clients are used to it. Well, now it looks like I am going to have to ;)Anyway if you want to check out Optigold, they are located here http://www.digitalpoint.com/products/isp/
Also there support is outstanding :) Good luck with your search and I hope my post was of some help to you!

[interactive]

Originally posted by David:

Obviously there are always situations that are abnormal.

For yours though.
When going to bill if the bandwidth usage is substantially higher, 2 to 3 times higher then it was the previous month, the software flags the account and doesn't send the bill until someone aproves it.

Very good point compcity. But what you could do is what David said have someone approve it. Or you could not coun that portion of time when it was abnormal have someone approve it and then add it in, know what I'm saying?

[LetsFly]

if someone can come up with such a script that can take the info and put it into a billing system, even if it was static, so that i dont have to check 2 pages, I would buy it, Fast Colocation is taking off quite quickly and its tough going though each MRTG url every month :-/