Billing vs. Without billing for Newbies

[Craig_Smith]

Lately we've had alot of people calling about charges for overages and resources that the reseller was unaware they would have to pay for. Most of these people could avoid the charges altogether if they would take some time to learn how to setup their plans properly.

Since we only have 2 available Billing Representatives available for phone support during the day, I thought I would shed some light on what I feel has become a major problem with new resellers (and one that could certainly be avoided with some prior planning). Wasting your time and ours explaining invoices can easily be avoided if some basic precautions are taken when creating your plans.

This is by no means a "how to", but should clear up some of the basics.

Setting Up Plans by Billing Type in H-SPhere.

There 2 distinctly different ways to setup plans in H-Sphere for your reseller account:

1) "Paid" (Automated billing)
2) "Without Billing" (billing turned off)

These two billing types can be set in the Plan Creation wizard under "Settings".


Option 1
-----------------------------
"Paid" (Automated billing)
Automated Billing In H-SPhere


The automated billing features should be used by any reseller who:

1) Has a merchant account or gateway which will enable credit card or check payments.
For compatible gateways see:
http://www.matrixreseller.com/suppor...y_manager.html

2) Wants to make money on allocated resources and overages used by their clients.


With the plan set to "Paid", a reseller has the ability to allocate a specific number of "free" resources as well as set prices for any given resource used OVER the free allotment and even create a setup fee for a resource.

Resource pricing can be set on the second page of the plan creation wizard if billing has been set to "Paid".


Example 1: Charging for resources that are free to the reseller (such as a domain).

A reseller who wishs to allow 1 "free" domain per user can do this in the plan creation wizard. If the reseller wants to make money on any additional domains they may also set a "setup" and "Monthly" fee for a domain.

To do this:

On the second page of the plan creation wizard under "Domain Types":

Set the "Free" domain to 1.
Set the "Setup" at 5.00
Set the "Monthly" at 1.00

If you have a plan that costs $10.00 per month and the user wishes to add a second domain, they would be charged a $5.00 setup fee and an additional $1.00 per month.
The reseller would make $11.00 per month off of this user and the $5.00 setup fee one time.
Since we do not charge resellers for additional domains the extra money for the second domain would be pure profit for the reseller.


Example 2: Charging for resources that are NOT free to the Reseller (such as Cold Fusion).

As you know, MatrixReseller charges you $10.00 per each Cold Fusion enabled domain per month after the free one(s) included in your Reseller Package. (For example the Cypher plan includes
1 free Cold Fusion domain).

It would not make good financial sense to give "free" Cold Fusion with a given user plan since you as the reseller must pay us $10.00 for each.

To set a custom price for Cold fusion go to the second page of the Plan Creation wizard:

Under "Web Services" next to "ColdFusion Module"

Set the "Setup" to 10.00
Set the "Monthly" to 15.00

If you have created a Windows plan that costs $10.00 per month and the user wishes to add Cold Fusion to a domain, they would be charged a $10.00 setup fee and an additional $15.00 per month to use Cold Fusion.
In this scenario the reseller would make $10.00 off of the setup fee (one time) and a profit of $5.00 per month on the recurring $15.00 monthly Cold Fusion charge for a total of $25.00 per month paid by the end user.

Some other resources which cost extra to the reseller are:

Additional Disk Space: $0.05 per MB (after quota)
Additional Bandwidth $2.50 per GB (after quota)
New Domain Registration: $15.00 per year
Additional Dedicated IP's: $1.00 each (after quota)
Additional Billable/User Accounts: $4.00 one time fee (after quota)
Additional Cold Fusion accounts: $10.00 each (after quota)
Urchin Web statistics: $2.50 per domain per month.

These resource prices should NEVER be left blank or "free" in your plan settings. We will charge you the above rates for each regardless of whether you charge you users for them.

**Important**
If you do NOT set a resource price or limit on resources, your end users will have the ability to raise or otherwise change their default quotas.

When you make money, we make money so be smart and put some thought into your pricing structures and you will make a nice profit on all resources!

If you are not sure what your Reseller plans' quotas are, you can check available and used resources for your entire reseller account in your Reseller Panel.

To view your available and used resources:

Login to http://cp.hsphere.cc:8080 with your Reseller username and password.
Click on "Home"
Click on "Reseller Prices"




Option 2
-----------------------------
"Without Billing" (billing turned off)
Using Outside Billing or No Billing


Setting up a plan "Without Billing" should only be used by a Reseller who:

1) Uses an outside or third-party billing system.
2) Is a Developer or Web Designer who does not want to give user access to the H-SPhere control panel.
3) Wants to give away free hosting services.
4) Wants to setup plans for themselves such as the Service Plan.
See:
http://www.matrixreseller.com/stepby...rviceplan.html

Setting your plan to "Without Billing" takes away many of the fundamental features that allow you to be a profitable reseller. There are many precautions you must take when setting your
plan to "Without Billing". If you have a plan set to "Without Billing" and it is activated, anyone on the internet can signup for your plan for FREE and use your hosting service at YOUR expense.

1) Always make sure your "Without Billing" plan is set to "OFF" in the Signup Access column. This will prevent anyone from signing up for the plan and will not affect any users already using the plan. You can turn it back on at anytime if you need to signup a new user.

2) Set your signups to be "Moderated". A Moderated signup will prevent any account activation until you approve it.

a) Login to your Administrative panel.
b) click on "Settings"
c) click on "Signup Guard"
d) adjust the settings to "Moderate Everything".

If someone signs up for a plan, they will not be activated until you "Create" the user waiting in queue.

To Activate a Moderated Signup:
a) Login into your Administrative panel.
b) Click on "Signup"
c) click on "Moderate"

Here you will have the ability to "Create" or "Delete" a newly registered user.


3) Set "Hard" Limits to your plans Resources.

You may notice that a plan set to "Without Billing" does not have the additional screens where you add resource prices as in a "Paid" plan. While you can set a limit on space, bandwidth etc., the end user will have the ability to change their quotas from the user panel.

To prevent this, set a "Hard" Limit on all resources as follows:
a) Login into the Administrative panel
b) click on "Info" or "Plans" to view all created plans.
c) in the "Advanced" column click on the "Resource" button.

Here you will see all available resources for this plan. You can disable any resources you do not wish to allow for the plan or set an exact "Hard" limit to any resource by clicking on the "edit" button next to the resource.

[Vixen]

I would like to add that you can view a break down of your invoices at anytime within your control panel, as we get alot of tickets asking "why this amount??" When a ticket is received like that, we simply go into your account and look at the exact same invoices that you can see and copy the information back into the ticket. We are viewing nothing different than you can from within your account. If everyone would take a little time and check over their invoices before asking for an explanation it would save everyone alot of time. If you honestly do not understand a charge, by all means let us know.

Instructions on Viewing Your Invoice(s):

1. Log into your RESELLER control panel
2. Click on HOME on the left hand side of the screen
3. Click on ONLINE INVOICE

This will bring up a list of each of your invoices. In blue you will see your plan name with your invoice number next to it. You can click any of those invoice numbers to view charges made to your card during that time. Once you have opened one of your invoices you may see an icon that looks like a green dollar bill. If you click that it will break down the charge that is listed for that particular day.

If you still have questions regarding billing issues once you have reviewed your invoices, please send an email to billing@vortechhosting.com

[Craig_Smith]

good point,, bump

[mresell]

Also click on the invoice details to get accurate detail. The main invoice page to me should be like a check register, but it does not show true billing. For instance one month I got billed for 2mnths due to downtime credits. Didn't know this on cc, hadn't got billed yet. So on the main running page you could not see this, but by clicking on individual invoices you could.

[hground]

What about accounts that have already been created from non-billable plans?

Will adding in hard limits on the Plan they were created from affect the existing accounts? If I want them to have different resource limits, do I need to create new non-billable plans and then move them to it. I am using 1 as an account that I share with some partners to do website development and managed hosting. I have a couple of others that are set up for ministries in my church.

I know the people that are working in these accounts and it should not present any problems, but just to make sure someone doesn't accidentially add 100 gig instead of 100mb to the disk space - I would like to have some hard limits in place.

How do I do that for these existing accounts?

Thanks!

hground

[mresell]

Any changes you make to plans that people are using should show up in their plans.

[somereseller]

In my experience moderation does not work when you don't use billing.