Understand Your Invoice and Billing Reports – Aeris

This article outlines and explains the information contained in your Invoice and other billing reports, so you can better understand reported device activity and charges in your account.

In this article:

Account Summary Report
Consolidated Account Summary Billing Report
Invoice Detail Report

Account Summary Report

Out of the available reports, the Account Summary Report provides the highest level of detail for each SIM's activities and charges. The report contains structured data that enables you to analyze each device's billable activities, from every zone it accessed during the previous month.

You can use the Account Summary Report to identify the source of charges for your devices. For example, you may find that you have a SIM with unusually high data service charges for the month. Upon reviewing the Account Summary Report, you may notice a concentration of charges within a geographic zone that the device's Rate Plan is not designed to accommodate. To resolve the issue, you may consider changing the SIM's Rate Plan to one that can account for usage in that zone.

When you download the Account Summary Report, its ZIP filename is yyyymm-New_Summary_nnnnn_YYYYMM.csv.zip, which contains the file New_Summary_nnnnn_yyyymm-1.csv. In these filenames:

nnnnn is your Customer Account ID.

yyyymm is the year and month billing period for the summary report being displayed.

For descriptions of each column in the Account Summary Report, see Columns for New_Summary_nnnnn_yyyymm-1.csv.

Account Summary Walkthrough

This section outlines the information provided in the Account Summary Report. Each row in the report represents information for a unique device-zone combination. Billable activity for a single device may appear in multiple rows, depending on the zones where the device was active. The report also includes user-defined custom fields for offline sorting or reporting. For additional details on each report column, see Columns for New_Summary_nnnnn_yyyymm-1.csv.

The first several columns include account, subscriber, and device identifiers (e.g., ACCOUNT ID, DEVICE ID, IMSI, ICCID, etc.).

Next, the report presents a group of columns with billing environment information for each device's activity (e.g., BILL STATUS, BILL STATUS START, BILL STATUS END, etc.).

Note: The PRORATE FACTOR column only applies to the device's home zone. For non-home zones, the value is set to 0 since the column does not apply to out-of-zone charges.

The next set of columns reports device charges for various prices, fees, and services for devices in bill (i.e. Provisioned) and non-bill (i.e. Suspended) states (e.g. ACCESS FEE PRICE, NON-BILL STATUS SMSM MO PRICE, NON-BILL STATUS SMS MT PRICE, etc.).

Following the pricing columns, the report includes a set of columns that outline each device's SMS, voice, and data service usage (e.g. PLAN INCLUDED SMS MO MSGS, PLAN INCLUDED MT MSGS, PLAN INCLUDED VOICE MO MINUTES, etc.). These columns represent the usage that falls within the scope of the device's access fee, and does not include overages or out of home-zone-usage information. This means that the reported usage of each service for a device may not exceed the device's allotted usage amount, as outlined in its Rate Plan.

Note: Depending on the time spent in a bill status, the included amounts may be subject to prorating.

The next set of columns includes calculated traffic charges by bill and non-bill status, and the aggregate total of the traffic charges (e.g., NON-BILL STATUS PKT TRAFFIC CHARGES, NON-BILL STATUS TOTAL TRAFFIC CHARGES, etc.). These numbers are based on the rates and chargeable quantities captured in the previous columns.

The following columns outline monthly charges, access fees, and activation or suspension related fees for each device (e.g., ACTIVATION FEE, SUSPEND FEE, DEACTIVATION FEE, etc.).

Note: The TOTAL DEVICE CHARGES column presents the zone-associated charges for the indicated SIM. This is the sum of the total traffic charges and monthly charges.

Comparing the Invoice to the Account Summary

This section describes how values within the Account Summary Report may correspond with information in the account Invoice.

Note: This section uses information from a sample account. Information in your personal Account Summary Report and Invoice may vary, depending on your devices, technology, and activities.

In the image below, the following Invoice Quantity values map to the indicated columns in the Account Summary report:

GSM Global - GPRS: Corresponds with the sum of values in the BILL PKT KB column (e.g. 432,442). See the red highlights in the image below.
GSM Global - SMS: Corresponds with the sum of values in the Bill SMS MT Messages column (e.g. 2,721). See the blue highlights in the image below.

In the image below, the following Invoice Amount values map to the indicated columns in the Account Summary report:

GSM Global - Access: Corresponds with the sum of the values in the PRORATED ACCESS FEE column (e.g. $19). See the red highlights in the image below.
GSM Global - GPRS: Corresponds with the sum of the values in the BILL PKT TRAFFIC CHARGES section (e.g. $386). See the green highlights in the image below.
GSM Global - SMS: Corresponds with the sum of the values in the BILL SMS MT TRAFFIC CHARGES section (e.g. $816.30). See the blue highlights in the image below.

Consolidated Account Summary Billing Report

The Consolidated Summary Report outlines traffic for each device in the account hierarchy (i.e. parent and child accounts) from the indicated billing period.

Note: This report is available only to Master Account users.

The Consolidated Summary Report's ZIP filename is YYYYMM-Consolidated_ Account_Summary_NNNNN_YYYYMM.csv.zip, which contains the file New_Consolidated_ Account_Summary_nnnnn_yyyymm.csv. In these filenames:

nnnnn is your Customer Account ID.
yyyymm is the billing period for the displayed summary report.

For descriptions of each column in the summary report, see Columns for New_Consolidated_ Account_Summary_nnnnn_yyyymm.csv. The definitions of values in this report are identical to those in the Account Summary Report.

Invoice Detail Report

The Invoice Detail report provides the first-level breakout of your Invoice charges. While your Invoice includes line items for each charge type, the Invoice Detail report includes information like Rate Plans, Zones, and SIM status information. This helps you identify:

Chargeable quantities or overages in your account.
Contributing factors to the Invoice's summarized charges for each Rate Plan.
Zone(s) where services were used.

The ZIP filename is InvoiceDetailReport_nnnnn_yyyymm.csv.zip, which contains the file InvoiceDetailReport_nnnnn_yyyymm.csv. In these filenames:

nnnnn is your Customer Account ID.
yyyymm is the billing period for the summary report being displayed.

For descriptions of each column in the Invoice Detail Report, see Columns for InvoiceDetailReport_nnnnn_yyyymm.csv.

Comparing the Invoice to the Invoice Detail Report

This section describes how values within the Invoice Detail Report may be related to information in the account Invoice. In the following images, the Invoice Detail Report is displayed at the bottom and the Invoice is shown at the top.

Note: This section uses information from a sample account with only one Rate Plan (GSM_Global_Plan_1), which is why the GSM (Global SIM) technology is listed in every row. Information in your personal Invoice Detail Report and Invoice may vary, depending on your devices, technology, and activities.

To calculate the total access fee charges as outlined in the Invoice Detail Report:

Open your Invoice Detail Report in Excel.
In the top navigation menu, select Data > Filter. This enables you to select subsets of rows.
In the spreadsheet, click the type column arrow, and ensure Access Fee is the only selected type in the pop-up. This filters the sheet to display only Access Fee information.
To calculate the total charges in your account, multiple the Access Fee row's rate column value (e.g. 1) by the total quantity column value (e.g. 19). This value should match the Access Fee row's total charges column value (e.g. 19), which is also displayed in the Invoice as the GSM Global - Access Amount value.

To calculate the data charges as outlined in the Invoice Detail Report:

Open your Invoice Detail Report in Excel.
Click the type column arrow and ensure Data Charges is the only selected type. In the image below, there are two Data Charge rows with the same Rate Plan, and unique zones (i.e., USA and Canada and Europe).
Note: This example illustrates some of the additional detail provided by the Invoice Detail Report. Although the charges share a Rate Plan, the report breaks down each charge according to its zone, and provides unique information for each row.
To calculate the total charges for each Data Charge row, multiply each row's rate and quantity column values.
To calculate the total charges for all Data Charge rows, sum the total charges from each Data Charge row. In this example, the total sum of charges is $386, which appears in the Invoice as the GSM Global - GPRS Amount value.

To calculate the SMS charges as outlined in the Invoice Detail Report:

Open your Invoice Detail Report in Excel.
Click the type column arrow, and ensure SMS Charges is the only selected type.
Note: While the example below only includes a single SMS Charges row, charges from each zone appear in the spreadsheet as unique columns.
To calculate the total charges for the SMS Charges row, multiply the rate column value (e.g. 0.300000012) by the total quantity column value (e.g. 2721) to get the total charges value (e.g. $816.30). This value is displayed in the Invoice as the GSM Global - SMS Amount value.