Introduction
Here are a few ground rules on the different business use cases enabled by the retail billing engine: How to manage tariffs and pricing using GreenFlux platform - CPO and eMSP perspectives
The following picture represents the working logic behind retail costs (applicable to any token managed in GreenFlux backend)
- When? This billing engine will run for every session where the token is hosted in our platform. This includes several potential use cases, some examples:
- using RFID cards hosted in GreenFlux.
- ad-hoc sessions using:
- Charge Assist (enabled by Stripe)
- contactless payment terminals
- What? It calculates the retail costs.
- Configuration of unit pricing:
- Management of retail pricing is always done from the respective eMSP where the tokens belong. Typically, eMSP operators have only one eMSP to manage their RFID cards and tokens. Please note, though that there might be additional eMSPs in your tenant (e.g. if you are offering ad-hoc services through contactless terminals)
- Please be aware we only support retail cost calculation for tokens which are managed in our platform. For external tokens, it will be their respective eMSPs calculating the retail costs.
The underlying principles for managing retail costs are the following:
- Any given driver MUST be assigned a retail package.
- Each retail package should have billing rules associated, which must cover the charging scenarios for the eMSP's respective drivers.
- Provided 1 and 2 are fulfilled, then the retail billing engine runs for every session taken by a token of that driver.
It is based on these three principles and the scenario at hand that the retail billing engine will then do the cost calculation for a given session and after that generate the CDR (charge detail record).
Retail package - What is it and how does it work?
The same way that wholesale uses the concept of tariff assigned to chargers, as a way to segment the chargers into different groups, in retail side, this is done through the retail package property, which is used to segment drivers into several groups, as it fits the eMSPs business offers.
Typical example: an eMSP positions itself with two different offers in the market:
- Offer 1: subscription of 10 EUR/month grants EV Driver a discount of 0.02 EUR/kWh in their sessions —> retail package “MASTER10”
- Offer 2: subscription of 0 EUR/month does not entitle the EV Driver to any discount in their sessions —> retail package “BASIC”
How to configure retail unit pricing?
STEP 0:
In order to access the retail billing engine screen, you need to go to the left pane, EMSP —> Network —> eMSPs —> then select the desired eMSP —> last click on retail billing rules or retail package tab.
Use Case RTL1 - Creating a default price per retail package
It is good practice to create a default pricing for any new retail package, which acts as last resort in case there isn’t a more specific pricing defined.
STEP 0:
As detailed before
STEP 1:
Click on ‘Add Billing Rule’, the following pop-up will appear:
STEP 2:
Select the required retail package and leave the remaining fields empty, in columns 1, 2 and 3. On the 4th column you should define the retail unit pricing. In this case we set only the wholesale factor to 1.0, which means the retail unit price (and the respective calculated retail costs) will be exactly the same as the wholesale costs.
STEP 3:
Review and save the changes.
Use Case RTL2 - Update pricing of existing billing rule or expire an existing billing rule
STEP 0:
As detailed before
STEP 1:
This is very straight forward, simply go to the retail billing rule overview page, locate the billing rule you want, click on the arrow and select the appropriate action.
