Data reconciliation mechanisms and operational applications of WiFi network billing system

The WiFi operator knows a word:"The certification decides whether it's gonna work, the billing decides if it's gonna make money, and the reconciliation decides whether it's gonna make money."I've been in touch with a few teams running public WiFi, and they've paid tuition fees on the reconciliation.——Some of the reconciliations are headaches, even at the end of the month, as data in WiFi network billing systems and bills for payment platforms are often not matched and the gap is not too small.

The first reaction of many people to the discovery that WiFi's network billing system was not reconciled properly is"The system billings are wrong.". In practice, however, most reconciliation differences are not due to a computational error but rather to inconsistent data calibres.

To give one example: WiFi Network Billing System records the time when an order is created in Beijing, and Wet pays bills in UTC time. Eight hours are missing on both sides, which leads to orders that arise around zero points per day, which can be attributed to different dates in two systems. When day-to-day reconciliations fail, it is common to check that a time zone problem is found to be a problem.

And like flow counts. WiFi Network Billing is a traffic of AccC-Input-Octets and Accccc-Output-Octets in Radius Accounting, and many NAS devices have their own set of rules when reporting these data.——Some report on a five-second basis, others once a minute, or only once at the end of the session. If NAS reports data are delayed or lost in themselves, the underlying data obtained by the billing system is incomplete and it is impossible to calculate them.

A mature WiFi network billing system, which should have a layered reconciliation mechanism. The first level is real-time reconciliation.——Each payment order is confirmed by a status check with the payout platform immediately upon receipt of the callback, ensuring that users pay for their Internet access. This layer requires the highest accuracy because it directly affects users’ experiences.

Second floor is the end of the day reconciliation.——The WiFi network billing system automatically cross-checks all payment orders and the system's billing records from the day before, generating daily reconciliation reports.

Level three is the end of the month reconciliation.——The monthly reconciliation report is the basis for financial closure and the raw data of the business analysis.

Many teams do this by finding one difference, and then checking it manually. This is a small-scale option that can be used to keep up with orders for days beyond hundreds.

A good WiFi network billing system should allow automatic classification and processing of differences. For example, small differences with a difference of less than a dime can be automatically marked as"Acceptable Errors"Direct reconciliation; because of differences in the time zone, the date of attribution may be automatically amended by the time stamp conversion rule; manual processing queues are entered only if there is no real reason for differences over a certain threshold.

The core value of this automated processing mechanism is not to save manpower, but to allow the operational team to focus on issues that really need attention and not to be consumed by a bunch of money errors.

Finally, we use the reconciliation data again. Many people view reconciliations as a purely financial exercise.——After that, the report is stored for review. But in practice, WiFi network billing system reconciliations are valuable business analysis material.

By way of reconciliation data, you can see the highest rates of refund for which packages are available, the highest rate of failure by users over which time periods and the highest rate of success in which payment is made. These data are an important reference to optimize pricing strategies and payment processes, provided that your system of reconciliations accurately and fully records this information. The reconciliation appears to be a supporting module in WiFi network billing systems but it is actually the last line of defense for operational quality. If reconciliations are not done well enough, the trust of the operating team in the system will continue to decline, leading to various hand-held accounts and work-flow movements bypassing the system and the system itself being emptied. In particular, the reconciliation mechanism requires several basic conditions: uniform order-generation rules, standard reconciliation file formats, automated differences processing processes, and periodic manual review systems. These are all missing one. Another value is often underestimated: it is the first signal of discovery of bugs in the system. Many billing systems hide problems.——Like, for example, the logic of calculating a meal package over time is wrong and the state re-alert of some payment method is abnormally delayed.——The user did not first discover it, but the few discrepancies that persisted in the reconciliation report were revealed. So the operating team should use the daily reconciliation reports as a health check sheet for the system, and the sudden increase in the rate of discrepancy often means that a link is broken.