Call usage and toll-fraud alerts

Call usage answers the questions you ask once calls are being billed: where the margin is, who is calling what, whether the bundles fit, and whether the carrier's bill matches the calls. Usage alerts watch the same data for a customer whose spend has jumped or whose phone system is being abused.

The Call usage page#

Open Sales and billing > Call usage and pick the month with Choose a month. It has four tabs.

Margin#

Group By customer or By destination. Each row shows Calls, Billed time, Charged, Cost, Margin, Margin % and how many calls are Unrated, per currency.

Every call counts, including inbound calls the carrier charged you for. By destination is where a wrong rate shows up: a class with a thin or negative margin usually means the sell rate has not kept up with the cost card.

Top numbers#

The numbers that answered outgoing calls went to, most first. Choose Most by calls, minutes, charge or cost. Each row shows the number, its destination, the talk time, who it was Called by (one customer, or how many) and the Last call.

Tick Premium and international only to keep the watched classes. This is the list to look at when a bill is higher than expected.

Bundle use#

For each bundle, customer and holder: the minutes included, Carried in, Used and Left over. A customer who never touches the allowance, or runs out in the first week every month, is on the wrong bundle. See Rate cards and bundles.

Carrier bills#

This tab sets what a carrier billed you against what its call records cost.

1. Press Enter a carrier bill.
2. Choose the Carrier and the Account: every source of that carrier, or one call record source it bills separately.
3. Choose the month the Calls were made in and the Currency.
4. Enter the Call charges on the bill, before tax. Leave rentals out: those are supplier contracts.
5. Optionally add the calls and minutes on the bill, the Bill reference and the Supplier invoice if it has been entered in procurement.
6. Save.

Each row then shows Carrier billed, Call records cost, the Difference and a status: matched, over, under, no records, no bill, or waiting while the bill is not due.

Tip: For a call-by-call comparison of the carrier's cost against your cost card, use the Carrier costs tab of Call rating. Carrier bills checks the total; Carrier costs finds the calls.

Usage alerts#

These are ordinary Tenvara alerts, checked every five minutes, each kept as one alert while it lasts and cleared when it has gone. Each links to the page that explains it.

Spend against normal#

"Normal" compares like with like. It is the average of the customer's last three full months, each counted only up to the same point in the month. On the 10th, this month's first ten days are set against the first ten days of each earlier month. A customer's first month of calls does not count towards normal.

The alert links to Margin for that customer.

Premium and international limits#

This is the toll-fraud alert. A compromised phone system is typically used to call premium-rate or international numbers, quickly and in volume.

The watched classes are premium rate, international landline, international mobile and international other, and a premium-rate number always counts whatever class it is in. When calls to them reach the limit within 24 hours, the alert is critical. Its message gives the minutes, the first and last call, the numbers called most and what to check on the phone system. It links to Top numbers with premium and international only ticked.

Calls are counted as soon as they are rated, including calls that could not be priced: an unknown rate does not hide a call abroad. How quickly the alert can fire depends on how often the call records arrive, so a source that sends each call as it ends gives the earliest warning. See Call records and sources.

Odd hours#

Fraud tends to happen when nobody is in. Three watched calls outside the working day raise their own critical alert, well below the volume limit. The working day is 07:00 to 20:00 in the customer's time zone, and weekends count as outside it all day.

Carrier bill against records#

Once you enter a carrier's bills, three alerts keep them honest: the carrier billed more than its records explain, the records cost more than the bill, or a month of records has no bill 20 days after it ended.

Changing the limits#

Under Usage alerts in Settings > Telephony:

• each alert's severity, or off,
• the spend percentage, the number of months that make up normal, and the smallest amount worth alerting on,
• the watched destination classes, and the calls and minutes that trip the limit,
• when the working day starts and ends, whether weekends are odd hours, and how many odd-hours calls it takes,
• the carrier bill share and amount, and the days to wait for a bill.

All but the carrier checks can be set per customer. A call centre that rings abroad all day needs higher limits than an accountancy practice that never does. See The settings catalogue and overrides.

Customers in onboarding or takeover mode gather usage alerts as findings like any other alert. For line and phone system alerts, see Telephony alerts.