Key Terms
Aria Allegro supports a wide range of pricing structures for usage, recurring, and activation services. You configure pricing by associating pricing models with price plans in the Aria Allegro UI. The models described in this article support hundreds of pricing structures—from simple flat rates to complex composite models that combine multiple rating approaches, attribute-based pricing, and accumulator logic.
Progressive Tiers
Progressive tiers are like tax brackets, where more than one tier can apply: n1 quantity in tier one, n2 quantity in tier two, and so on until the total quantity is rated.
Progressive tiers can be quantity based or balance based.
Prospective Tiers
Prospective tiers are based on prospective (past) volumes. For example, volume from the first six months in a calendar year determines the pricing for the next 12 months.
Aria Allegro evaluates prospective tiers using billing-time usage rating, also called two-pass rating. In the first pass, the system processes and accumulates usage for the billing period. In the second pass, the system uses the accumulated value to determine the fixed tier that applies to all usage in the period.
Prospective tiers are always balance based. With prospective tiers, only one tier applies to the entire quantity, based on the balance of the accumulator.
Use prospective tiers if your usage volumes are cyclical in nature (higher in specific months of the calendar year and lower in other months). In these scenarios, you can use the volume from the higher months and average or annualize that volume before you use it in your tier evaluation.
Prospective tiers are also common for partners and resellers who offer additional value-add services on top of what Aria manages. These organizations want to know future pricing rates so they can add a markup on top of Aria prices based on prospective volume.
Aria Allegro provides the following parameters to structure your prospective tier pricing:
- Evaluation Start—A month-of-the-year value that determines the start month from which to accumulate volume. For a fixed calendar-quarter deployment starting from the first month, set this value to 1.
- Evaluation End—A month-of-the-year value that determines the end month up to which to accumulate volume. The evaluation end can be less than the evaluation start. For example, an evaluation start of 10 and an evaluation end of 4 means the system accumulates for a six-month period starting from October 1 at 00:00:00 to April 1 at 00:00:00.
- Offset Months—The number of months after which the pricing term takes effect. This works for resellers who add a markup on top of the tiered price for their customers. The offset month provides a buffer period during which the next tier pricing is available to partners and resellers so they can revise and add markups against Aria pricing.
- Next Pricing Term—The duration, in months, for which the next pricing term is effective. Ensure that all 365 days of the year are covered from a pricing-term point of view. You can also configure rolling prospective tiers. For example, the last three months of volume determine the pricing for the next three months, and this rolls forward continuously. In this scenario, the balance reference comes from the evaluation period while the system simultaneously accumulates for the next evaluation term.
- Volume Treatment—Determines how the system treats the aggregate value before rating. Select Annualize, Average, or As-Is.
- Annualize converts the aggregate value to an annual volume. For example, if the aggregate value for a three-month evaluation term is 9,000, annualize calculates the value as 9,000 times 12 divided by 3, or 36,000. The system uses the resulting value to determine the tiers.
- Average converts the aggregate value to a monthly average volume. For example, if the aggregate value for a three-month evaluation term is 9,000, average calculates the value as 9,000 divided by 3, or 3,000. The system uses the resulting value to determine the tiers.
- As-Is uses the aggregate value as is for rating.
Quantity Tiers
Quantity tiers are based on the input quantity of the usage record and always start at 0 for each usage record.
For example, if a customer downloads a large file of data (9 GB), you can set up tier pricing so that for 1–5 GB you charge X1 per GB, and for 5–10 GB you charge X2 per GB.
Balance Based Tiers
Balance based tiers are based on the balance of an accumulator resource.
Rating uses the balance of the accumulator, based on the tier type and the time of the transaction, to determine which tiers apply.
Tier Ranges With Allegro
Tier range starts of minimum quantity to maximum quantity in Aria Allegro follow these characteristics:
- The first tier with a minimum quantity always starts at 0.
- The last tier with a maximum quantity should always be empty or 0.
- The minimum quantity of a tier is inclusive (greater than or equal to).
- The maximum quantity of a tier is exclusive (less than).
Allowances and Accumulators
When you set up rates for a pricing model, Aria Allegro lets you consume allowance resources and use accumulators.
Within a subscription (balance group) for each master plan instance, different usage types can share the same allowance. This provides sharing of allowances within a master plan instance. There is no limit on the type of allowances consumed: as long as there is a charge to offset, more than one allowance can be consumed. For example, if the rating impact of the transaction is $20, the system can consume $20 worth of one or more allowances. When the system consumes an allowance, monetized usage tracks the allowance consumed and offsets the cost of the transaction for that allowance.
Similarly, the same usage can accumulate to one or more accumulator resources. For example, for the same usage record, you can aggregate both the quantity and the amount in the respective accumulators.
Billing Reference Price
The Aria Allegro catalog lets you augment activation and recurring services with allowances, accumulators, or both. For these scenarios, the pricing admin may need a reference of the pricing setup in core Aria to determine how much allowance to provide for the one-time or recurring service. You can find this reference in the price plan details under the Billing Reference Price attribute.
Volume Rating
Volume rating is a special case of prospective tier pricing. For some verticals, clients require that all usage records are rated using the same tier, determined by the total volume of usage records during the usage invoicing cycle.
In Aria Allegro, you achieve this with the Volume Rating indicator. If the pricing model selected is Tiered only, the system enables the Volume Rating attribute for selection. When you enable the Volume Rating flag for a price plan and that price plan is used during rating, Aria Allegro performs two-pass processing:
- In the first pass, as the system ingests usage, it accumulates the total quantity of all usage records.
- In the second pass, as part of the end-of-day job schedule processing, the system picks up all usages again, looks at the accumulator value from the first pass, and applies a fixed tier based on that value to every usage record.
Make sure the tier accumulator reference and the accumulator impact are set up correctly in the price plan.
Customer Attribute-Based Model
The customer attribute-based model rates transactions using a combination of customer attributes and their values.
You can select the following customer attributes, among others, for customer attribute-based pricing from a single attribute dropdown:
- Account Type—Identifies the type of account. Possible values include Direct Customer, Partner, Reseller, Value-Added Partner, and more.
- Account Sub Type—Identifies the categorization of accounts, such as Platinum, Gold, Silver, Green, Yellow, or Red.
- Market Segment—Identifies whether the account is a business-to-consumer (B2C) customer or a small, medium, or large enterprise.
- Sales Channel—Identifies the channel through which the account was onboarded, such as customer service representative (CSR), self-service, e-commerce, and more.
- Address Attributes—Identifies the customer account's City, State, Country, or Postal Code. These are native account fields, so you do not need to configure them as custom attributes before use. You select one address attribute from the same dropdown used for the other customer attributes above.
- And more…
You configure address attributes for customer attribute-based pricing at the client level. A configuration you add for one client does not appear or apply when rating under a different client.
Note: If a customer account has no address on file, the account does not satisfy any price point condition that includes an address attribute. Aria Allegro sends the related usage to suspense rather than falling back to a default or wildcard match. Include a non-address fallback condition in your price offer if you want usage from accounts without an address on file to rate successfully.
Transaction Attribute-Based Model
The transaction attribute-based model rates transactions using transaction attributes. Transaction attributes are derived attributes for the usage record. These attributes can be a combination of time model, zone model, rate unit, and more.
Usage Attribute-Based Model
The usage attribute-based model rates transactions using a combination of raw attributes from the usage record. You can include a few usage record attributes and their value combinations in a single monetization plan.
Aria Allegro lets you create many such models for the same service, each based on a different combination of usage attributes.
Composite Model
The composite model lets you combine one or more models into a unique, custom model.
A composite model can combine two or more of the following: tiered models (any type of tier structure), the transaction attribute-based model, and the usage attribute-based model.