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It allows you to sell priority support as recurring service in automated fashion.Key service in multiple ways:
- Recurring billing
In this scenario, customer pays up front for access to priority support. You can configure module to assign customer to priority support group to easily distinguish such customers from others.
If customer fails to pay for recurring invoice for such service, his access to priority support group will be revoked. - Pre-Paid Metered billing
When priority support package is set to use Pre-Paid metered billing:- You define price per one support hour
- Customer pays upfront for certain number of hours, defined in package
- Any support time entry recored by staff in HostBill Ticket Billing is added to related customer service, deducing credit available in account
- You can set certain credit threshold, below which new invoice to top-up credit available will be issued
In sample setup below package using Priority Support module is set to have 1hr of support time billed for $1 USD.
Credit is set to $10 - giving customer access to 10 support hours.
Threshold is set to $0 - if customer would ran out of support time, new invoice will be issued automatically for him.
- Post-Paid Metered billing
When using post-paid, customer is billed on recurring basis only for time used on Priority Support in recent billing period (ie in past month).
In sample below, 1hr of support time is set to cost $1 USD.
Customer pays $30 One-time fee just to get access to Priority support.
Optionally you can set fixed recurring fee that will always be added to customer invoice, no matter on actual time billed.
General concepts
- Once enabled, priority support will create new Client Group: Priority Support
- Module will also auto-create Ticket macro and Ticket post-filter
- Once client purchases priority support service and pays for it, HostBill will can (if configured so) automatically assign client to Priority Support Client Group
- Ticket opened by Priority client automatically will get high priority, allowing other HostBill functions to react on this event
- If related package is suspended (ie. client forgets to pay), client is automatically removed from Priority Support group
Configuring Priority Support
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for all billing scenarios
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- Go to Settings->Modules, find and activate Priority Support module
- You'll be taken to Settings->Apps to configure related app - just add any app name there
- Go to Settings->Products & Services, add new orderpage using Other Services product type
- Add your priority support package, set price, name name and description. From Connect With App tab pick Priority_Support module
- Optional: Select client group that client purchasing this package should be assigned to
- Optional: You can provide additional email addresses that should be notified once related client opens or responds to ticket
- Optional: If this package should use Metered billing (described above), select Ticket Rate ID from Support → Ticket Billing → Ticket rates
Whenever staff member would need to bill customer for support time, against his Priority support service, he should use this ticket
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- rate.
Note: when editing ticket rates in Ticket Billing section you also define hourly price for a rate, but it is not used for metered billing
- rate.
- Save changes, now you can proceed to General tab to configure billing using one of types described above
- Under Client Functions you can enable Support Report function - it is used with Metered billing - your customer can track what his support hours were used for in related service in client portal:
Staff member have access to similar report in related account details section:
Billing for work using Metered billing and Priority Support
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When you've set your package to use metered billing (either Pre or Post-paid), you can record your work in Ticket you work on (this is standard HostBill ticket system feature).
To record work against customer priority support service you should use Ticket Rate set in related Package configuration (As described above).
After adding work items that is confirmed it should be billed against customer service, use Bill Pending Items: immediately
Billed items will (depending on billing scenario set above) deduct customer support credit or increase next invoice amount due, and will appear in support reports for admin and customer.
Optional: Configuring Mobile Notifications
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