Apogee Billing System - Cable Provider, ISP and Utility Subscriber Billing and Management

The Apogee Billing System was created with the small to medium sized business in mind. It provides many features, some that other billing systems just don't have, all at a low flat rate per month. We strive to give you top quality service and support, at a low fixed monthly rate.

Our billing system was designed with ISP's and Cable operators in mind, but it flexible and powerful enough to support any type of monthly billed business.

Technology

• Cloud servers, hosted by some of the best names in the industry for security and minimum down-time
• Leveraging open-source for several core systems (Apache, Firebird SQL, etc)
• Servers are PCI Compliant and scanned regularly for vulnerabilities
• AES256 encryption is used for all sensitive data

General Financial and Accounting

• Supports Open Item and Balance Forward accounting
• Financial reporting by Transaction Date or Posting Date
• Realtime payment processing using BASYS, IPPay, Authorize.net, and First Atlantic

Customer Management

• Search for customers by account number, name, address, phone number, email, and other custom fields
• View customer information, current services, equipment, history, and notes on one page with tabs for additional details
• Store typical contact information such as name, address, email, and phone numbers
• Customers and physical locations use persistent IDs across connections and disconnections to track full history for each
• Changes to customer services are made through schedulable work orders that encapsulate the changes, notes, and new rates
• Custom fields for customers for tracking any information needed
• Email or print PDF documents of receipts, statements, and work orders from customer’s history
• History of all equipment assignments and returns
• Unread incoming SMS messages and SelfCare help requests from customers are displayed with an alert on the home page

Billing and Services

• Unlimited billing cycles allowing customers to have different billing and collection schedules
• Monthly billing process may be automated to run at a specific time on a specific day of the month
• Packages, taxes, and other charges may have different rates and configurations for different reporting areas/franchises
• Packages may be defined with customizable billing periods such as Monthly, Quarterly, 12 Months, and 13 Month Free
• Automatic discounts are applied as customer’s services are changed (Double and Triple play discounts for example)
• Rollover services allow automatically changing from one service to another (or removal) after a specified number of months
• Guarantor accounts can be used to apply specific charges to another account
• Fees may be configured to automatically apply to customers with designated packages
• Automatic Non-Pay Disconnection process creates pending disconnect orders and soft disconnects customer services
• Promise to Pay dates may be applied to a customer to delay automatic Late Fees and Non-Pay disconnection until after that date
• 3rd part usage and flat rate billing amounts may be set to import automatically

Payments and Adjustments

• Payment and Adjustment account entry field allows searching for accounts by name, address, phone number, or email address
• Payment entry from any page without disrupting your current work. The quick-payment box allows adding payments to any pending batch or immediately processing Card or Bank Draft payments
• Adjustment entry from any page without disrupting your current work. Adjustments are immediately posted to the selected account
• Users may optionally have multiple pending batches open with different descriptions and dates
• Managers may view and modify all batches (pending, posted, deleted, or closed) from a central batch administration page
• All posted credits may be manually assigned to customer transactions if desired but may also be set to always apply to the oldest unpaid transactions automatically
• Card and Bank Draft processing may be set to automatically run every month
• Customers may optionally choose the day of the month their automatic payment will process from a pre-defined list of dates
• Card and Bank Account information used for online processing are always tokenized with the processor
• NACHA ACH draft and pre-note file generation using an ACH type payment batch
• Bank information stored locally for NACHA ACH files are encrypted using AES 256
• Payments and Adjustments can automatically delete pending Non-Pay Disconnect orders and restore services that have been soft disconnected

Reporting

• Reports use PDF format by default, but may be easily changed to Excel, CSV, or HTML
• PDF and HTML reports are viewable directly in the browser with no 3rd party application required
• Unlimited configurable reporting groups for totals, subtotals, and individual area details
• Report Designer can create customized version of existing reports as well as completely new reports
• Customer Filters may be created that limit reports to a specific sub-set of customers based on many parameters. Filters may be named and saved for easy use in the future
• Any report or group of reports may be automatically generated and emailed to any email address on specific days and times.
• Statement Batches are generated after billing and may be reviewed and submitted to Apogee Billing for printing from the billing system
• Work Order and Statement PDFs are always viewable from the customer’s transaction history
• Automatic geocoding of locations allows creation of FCC BDC reports

SMS and Email Integration

• Users may send predefined or custom email and SMS messages to customers directly from the customer page
• Text messages from customers are recieved in the billing system and can be responded to using the billing system (*requires IVR/Telephony interface)
• History of all email and text communications to and from the customer is part of the customer's history
• Automatic notification emails and SMS messages may be sent at specific times of the month to specific groups of customers (using Account Filters). For example, send notices about expiring credit cards, past due balances, or upcoming scheduled work
• Users may email documents such as statements and receipts to the customer directly from the customer’s history
• Statement Emails may be set to send automatically after billing has processed and statements are generated

Equipment and Provisioning

• All Provisioning configuration such as BSID creation and package assignment can be done within the billing system
• Create unlimited non-addressable equipment groups to track any types of equipment
• Equipment fields may be shown or hidden by Equipment Type so that you do not see unnecessary fields
• History of 3rd party provisioning commands with live updates as commands are processed
• New integration with 3rd party management systems added as they are requested.
• Automatic equipment charges may be added to customers based on the model of equipment assigned
• Each provision system allows drawing a plant/service area using Google Maps tools. These may be exported as shape files for use in FCC BDC/Fabric reporting

Workforce Management

• Visual, drag-and-drop scheduling for Work Orders, Service Calls, and Generic Tasks
• Automated daily emails informing technicians of unfinished work orders for prior dates (optional)
• Any Apogee User ID may be designated to be scheduled jobs (Work Orders, Service Calls, and Generic Tasks)
• Automated rescheduling of uncompleted work to future open slots on the same technician (optional)
• System and Technician level holidays are used to block days on the scheduler
• A simplified, technician-oriented front end is available for mobile technician access
• Job Status changes on orders can change order coloring as well as initiate customizable SMS or email notifications
• Service Calls may be created for customers that contain notes to and from technicians as well as problem and resolution codes for reporting
• Work Orders and Service Calls allow collection of digital signatures on touch devices indicating work authorization and completion

Customer SelfCare and IVR (Interactive Voice Response)

• SelfCare website allows customers to view contact information, balance, account history and make payments
• SelfCare website allows customers to configure automatic payments and select the day of the month for processing
• SelfCare may also be used to upload documents to the customer’s account and send help requests
• IVR allows customers to call and hear their balance as well as make payments and leave messages
• Configure the IVR menu - options include make a payment, get account balance, record a message, change PIN, refresh equipment, forward to another number and more...
• IVR can be configured for custom greetings and alerts
• IVR can also act on keyword text messages (example: a customer texting "BALANCE" will return a customer's balance information)

System Configuration

• Customer Selfcare options such as disabling content, social media links, and contact information may be changed from the billing system
• Any billing system process may be scheduled to run at recurring intervals or specific days of the week, month, or year
• Users are assigned security roles which can be modified to enable or disable any feature

Other features

• Documents and Images may be attached to Accounts and Locations using a drag-and-drop interface
• Home page with links to recently accessed accounts, equipment, and reports, as well as quick-lookup lists such as past due accounts, unscheduled orders, and others.
• Built-in, full-featured To-Do item tracking
• Real-time chat functionality between Apogee Billing users
• Dashboard with customizable graphs and information about general trends. Graphs are customizable
• Custom surveys may be created and sent to customers via SMS or email
• A configurable Onboard application provides a shopping cart experience for new customers to create a pending order for service