Lesson Overview
The rating process can be triggered by convergent invoicing and can be done for simple rating operations in convergent invoicing.
Business Example
Customer Sales South (number 1100000007) has to pay usage per day according to the daily volume. The customer has two provider contracts 81 and 82.
There are 3 consumption items per day. The consumption items are rated before they can be billed.
Convergent Invoicing Triggered Rating
Rating of consumption items can be done in SAP Convergent Charging, other legacy rating systems or for simple calculation rules.
Requirement and Motivation
Pre-aggregation of consumption items to decrease the following:
Data base usage in SAP CI.
Network traffic between SAP CI and SAP CC.
Rating transactions in SAP CC.
Less billable items, technical resources and costs for customer.
In order to reduce the billable item volume, consumption items are split according to provider contract and consumption date in different groups.
The aggregation rule calculates the minutes per day.
Selection of due consumption items according to rating from date.
Aggregation according to grouping variant which splits consumption items according to provider contract and consumption date (simple date without timestamp).
Rating in CI in function module assigned to rating group. Calculation rule is minutes and 0.19 cent/minute.
Move unrated consumption items in consumption items rated database.
Creation of billable items and storage in billable item class.
Optional: Link between consumption items and billable item.
As a result, volume is reduced from 93 consumption items aggregated before rating. The result for May in 31 billable items is one billable Item per day per contract.
Rating Group
The super ordinate term for the execution of rating according to defined rules. These rules are defined by parameters that you can use to control the rating process.
For example, a rating group controls the selection of the consumption items, their grouping into rating units, and the call of the rating module.
The consumption items of a class can be processed in a rating process only if the class is assigned to a rating group.
In a rating group, you can group consumption items together based on both business and technical aspects. For example, you can assign the classes for end customer consumption items and partner consumption items to separate rating groups, with the result that the items of these classes can be processed in separate rating processes, and can be rated, if necessary, by different rating systems or rating modules.
Business Example
Rating Group RVOI selects consumption items from consumption item class CVOI. In the exercise, Create Consumption Item Class you assign your own consumption items to rating group RVOI.
Facts about the Selection of Consumption Items
- Consumption Items are selected according to rating group, Rating Date, selected business partner and optional more selection criteria that can defined.
- If target date for Rating is reached the target date is the earliest possible billing time for a consumption. (Due for Rating!)
- Only Consumption Items are selected that are assigned to Rating Group.
- If no aggregation is defined, each Consumption Item will be rated separately.
- Dependent on a selection variant, the consumption items will be selected. A fix criteria is the selected Consumption Item Class.
- Only Consumption Items will be selected, that are due for rating. The Rating From date needs to be reached.
Rating Group YN002 selects consumption items from Consumption Item Classes HRB1, HRB2, HPST
Selection of Consumption Items
- Consumption Items are summarized in Rating units to be processed together and displayed on an billing document together. The Rating Unit is the basis for the rating. first step, the system groups all source documents that have the same business partner.
- In a first step, the system groups all source documents that have the same business partner.
- Dependent on a grouping variant of the Rating Group, the consumption items are splitted into more rating units.
- For rating in dialog with expert mode, the rating units created will be offered for selection in a dialog box.
- Rating process runs Event 0020 of the rating Group.
Billable Item as Output:
- Consumption Items of different Rating Groups are rated separately.
- Billable Items can be aggregated after Rating as well.
Rating Date
The date up to which you want consumption items to be considered for the rating, with reference to their target date for rating.
If you select the first of July as the rating date, all items which the rating date is the first of July or older, will be sent to the rating instance.
If an item has a rating date of July 13, it will not be sent.
This concept and the scheduling concept is the same as for billing and invoicing.
Creating Rating Units
If the system processes more than one consumption item during the rating of a business partner, a frequent request is that these items must not be processed together in shared rating, but instead to use criteria, such as a common consumption period, to group the items and perform rating by groups. Rating meets this requirement by creating rating units.
A rating unit groups together all consumption items that are processed together in a rating run.
Rating units can be created automatically using the grouping characteristics of the grouping control that is entered for the rating process. Or you can manually influence the creation of rating units in dialog processing for rating.
Example:
You use graduated prices that depend on total monthly consumption. You define rating units that group together the items of one month. Your own implementation calculates the total consumption for the month and writes the information to a corresponding field of the consumption item. Rating accesses this information and determines the graduated price.
You aggregate consumption items using grouping variants and aggregation variants that you define in customizing.
In addition to determining the automatic grouping of consumption items into rating units, a grouping variant is used to specify the level of aggregation of consumption items. If it is already specified which consumption items are aggregated, the aggregation variant specifies how the system summarizes the information of the consumption items.
