Enabling Minimum Fees

Certain business models require invoicing a minimum fee, usually on a monthly basis, irrespective of the actually incurred costs.

Minimum fee workflow

With JustOn, you can put such scenarios into practice as follows: You create a subscription item with the billing type Minimum Fee. The price of this item represents your base charge. The subscription items that you intend to charge up against this minimum, like usage data items, for example, must be marked as included accordingly.

Now if the sum of the included items is lower than or equal to the minimum price, only the minimum fee item shows up on the invoice as a single invoice line item. If, however, the sum of these grouped items is larger than the minimum price, the individual items appear on the invoice as individual invoice line items. Any items not marked as included in the minimum are not subject to this calculation.

For transactional items, there are two modes for applying the minimum comparison:

Global minimum: Compares the sum of all included items to the minimum
Group minimum: Compares the sum of included items that are grouped by a transaction criterion to the minimum

The corresponding calculations are performed on net prices.

Minimum fee example calculation

A mobile phone service vendor invoices a monthly base price, and calls, text messages and internet data are charged up against this minimum. One month, the sum of incurred usage data costs is lower than the base price, so only the base price is invoiced. Another month, the sum of incurred usage data costs is higher than the base price, which makes them appear individually on the invoice.

Items	January Costs	February Costs
Base Price	5,00 €	5,00 €
Calls	1,50 €	1,90 €
Texts	1,80 €	2,70 €
Data	1,20 €	2,30 €

	January Invoice	February Invoice
Invoice Line Items	Base Price 5,00 €	Calls 1,90 € Texts 2,70 € Data 2,30 €
Total	5,00 €	6,90 €

Configuring the minimum fee calculation involves the following steps:

Creating a minimum fee item
Defining included items
Defining the minimum comparison mode

Once set up, the prices of the included items are charged up against the price of the minimum fee item when creating an invoice for the subscription.

Creating Minimum Fee Item

You need a subscription item with the billing type Minimum Fee, whose price represents the minimum fee.

Open the corresponding subscription.
In the Items section, click New Item.
Specify the details as required.

The mandatory data include
- Title
- Billing Type: Minimum Fee
- Price: Represents the minimum price to be invoiced
- Order No.: Key to match source data to a subscription item
Click Save.

This generates the minimum fee item.

Info

You can define multiple minimum fee items in a subscription. Note, however, that they must not be active at the same time.

Defining Included Items

The items intended to be charged up against the minimum price (or to be included in the minimum) must be marked accordingly.

Open the corresponding subscription.
In the Items section, click New Item to create new items, or click Edit in the row of existing items to be marked as included.
Select the checkbox Include In Monthly Minimum.
Click Save.

This includes the current item in the minimum. When creating an invoice for the subscription, the item's price is charged up against the price of the minimum fee item created before.

Defining Minimum Comparison Mode

For transactional items, there are two modes for applying the minimum comparison:

Global minimum: Compares the sum of all included items to the minimum
Group minimum: Compares the sum of included items that are grouped by a transaction criterion to the minimum

To define the comparison mode you want to apply:

Open the corresponding subscription.
Click Edit in the row of the minimum fee item.
Select or, respectively, deselect the checkbox Ignore Item Criterion.
- Selecting Ignore Item Criterion on the minimum fee item activates the global minimum mode.
- Deselecting Ignore Item Criterion on the minimum fee item activates the group minimum mode.