Exploring Shared Allowances

A payment in advance model offers a prepaid scenario with a discount for the payment type. As a result, it should be shared across an organizational structure. This requires a shared allowance in SAP Convergent Charging.

Shared allowances can be shared between independent contracts using the same shared ID.

Shared allowances are identified during the rating process through a share ID. The share ID is a combination of a share ID parameter defined in cross-catalog mapping during product modeling, and a sharing group defined in the subscription contract.

If your charge plan defined in SAP Convergent Charging uses shared allowances, it needs at least one parameter to define the share ID that is used to create and access a shared allowance. A sharing is only possible between contracts using the same share ID.

A Shared Allowance is an allowance that can be shared between contracts of different subscriber accounts. Shared allowances are identified during the rating process via a share ID. All contracts that want to use a shared allowance must know the share ID of the shared allowance to do so.

• Shared allowances come with a constraint, however:
• Sharing contracts and shared allowances cannot be used together. A product which supports shared allowances cannot be used in a sharing or a shared contract and vice versa.
• Rerating is not possible with Shared Allowances.

To use shared allowances, the following requirements must be met:

1. The allowance plan used for the shared allowance must be created with the checkbox Is Shareable enabled.
2. When creating the allowance with the "Create Allowance" operator component, the checkbox Create a Shared Allowance must be enabled.
3. When sending an allowance event to the shared allowance, the scope needs to be selected as Only Shared Allowances.

The share ID is created by SAP Subscription Order Management as a combination of a share ID assigned to a dedicated parameter defined in the cross-catalog mapping during product modeling, and a sharing group identifier assigned in the subscription order.

The sharing group must be assigned during order capturing if shared objects is enabled for the subscription product in SAP Subscription Order Management.

1. Sharing Group Creation: Create a sharing group as customer master data, for example for Headquarter 02, if all allowances should be shared in this group.
2. Create a subscription product with an allowance as a contributor product with cross catalog mapping assignment of shared objects.

   1. Set Shared Objects = YES

   2. Assign a Shared ID as a Parameter

   The charge plan in Convergent Charging is a shared charge plan.

3. Optionally create a subscription product with an allowance as a consumption product of the shared allowance. The consumption product omits the shared allowance creation. It´s also possible to create and consume with the contributor product.

1. Create a subscription order and a subscription contract as a contributor for the shared allowance in SAP Subscription Order management.
2. The shared allowance is created in SAP Convergent Charging. The shared allowance ID is a concatenation of the sharing group assigned in the subscription order, and a defined shared ID. In our process example, it´s the shared ID A123.
3. Create a second subscription order and assign the shared ID in the subscription order.
4. A provider contract in Convergent Charging represents a sharing contract in SAP Subscription Order Management, which is used to consume the shared allowance balance created by the contributor contract.
5. The consumption of all assigned provider contracts reduces the shared allowance balance.

Sharing contracts and sharing allowances have the following important differences and similarities: