Subscriber Credits and Credit Profiles
Credits play a pivotal role in managing capped subscriber accounts, as they define the data quotas that can be applied to them. Multiple credits can be used with a single subscriber account. These credits can automatically renew and expire.
Usage of Credits
When a subscriber account is capped as per its applied service profile, the subscriber will be suspended with an error message "data usage depleted." This can be seen under the Subscriber Account Status. A Subscriber Credit needs to be added to the Subscriber account before the account will be operational.
However, adding a Subscriber Credit requires a Credit Profile, and a Credit Profile requires a Credit Group name.
Credit Group Names
A credit group name differs from a name applied to a subscriber credit profile. The group name is used to group credits together for reporting purposes.
For example, multiple credits with the same group name, such as Monthly Anytime, would be reported together, showing total data for Monthly Anytime per subscriber.
Subscriber Credit Groups are located at Subscriber Management > Credit Profiles > Credit/Group Names.
Credit Profiles
Credit Profiles are predefined credit templates that can be applied to subscriber accounts.
Credit Profile Name must be unique.
Credit Group name for reporting.
Volume Gb - Data in gigabits provided.
Effective Start and Effective End
In different timezones, day and night are not the same time universally, and other service providers define time ranges differently. Therefore, we permit defining the effective time range for a credit profile in UTC. A credit applied within a specific time range will only be available within that time range.
The effective end is inclusive of the time range.
Volume Metric and Volume Span
If both Volume Metric and Volume Span are defined, they are used to determine the lifespan of the data applied by the credit profile; otherwise, the credit will last until all its data is depleted.
The Volume Metric defines the unit in which the Volume Span is applied to the credit. For example, a span of 3 with the metric Monthly means the volume of data will expire after three months.
Renew Metric and Renew Span
If both the Renew Metric and Renew Span are defined, it will be used to determine when a new credit will applied to the subscriber account using the same Credit profile as the original credit that was applied using this credit profile.
In short, credits are never purged from subscriber accounts until their volume of data expires or they renew.
New credits are added so that the free data of the previous credit, known as the rollover, is kept until it expires as per the Volume Metric and Volume Span. The rollover occurs after a credit has been renewed. The data left over from the previous credit is the rollover.
Subscriber Credits
A credit can only be added to capped subscriber accounts.
As per the above view of Subscriber Credits, four credits are currently applied to the Subscriber Account. Two monthly credits are applied using different credit profiles for different time ranges. The first two in the previous month have yet to be purged, and rollover data has been rolled over as per the Volume Metric and Volume Span configured on their profiles. The last two are the most recently applied credits, automatically created as per the previous credits credit profile, Renew Metric and Renew Span.