DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN E-BILLING SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

E-billing is the delivery of electronic bills to end consumers (B2C) and providing a payment option for them [1] and it can simply be explained as a technology which enables the replacement of paper with electronic documents delivered through email or a website [8].

Telecommunication Billing is a process of collecting credit usage, aggregating it, applying required charges and finally generating invoices for the customers.Telecom Billing process also includes receiving and recording payments from the customers.[2]The billing process involves receiving billing records from various networks, determining the billing rates associated with the billing records, calculating the cost for each billing record, aggregating these records periodically to generate invoices, sending invoices to the customer, and collecting payments received from the customer[2].

1.1       BACKGROUND INFORMATION

What is the billing system?

The billing systems process the usage of network equipment that is used during the service usage into a single Call Detail Record (CDR) [1]. In GSM 1900, traditionally in North America, the mobile user pays for both incoming and outgoing calls. The reason being that one subscriber cannot tell if the other subscriber is a mobile subscriber because of the American integrated numbering plan [2].  GSM specifications do not govern tariffs or packages because each operator decides this. This project will be focusing on billing system and the main difference between common and basic billing system usually used in telecommunication. It will involve analyzing the basic billing system from a management and business point of view and describing the basic functionalities.

We can divide the system into five parts as follows [1]:

1.      Services: Service is the entity offered by the company and targeted to the customers.

2.      Accounts: The customer account includes customer contact profile information, account type, login information, and payment method

3.      Ratings: Rating is the process of converting usage records from one form to another, like converting usage units to its cost.

4.      Payments: Each customer in the system has an account balance, which affects any invoices requested by the customer and any payments done by the customer.

5.      Invoices: It is the entity generated by the billing system to inform the customer that he must pay for his service usage or ordering.

1.3        STATEMENTS OF PROBLEM

·         Overcharging: In telecommunication, the billing system is a very sensitive part and it is faced with a lot of challenges like the overcharging which makes customers/ users complain. This problem may arise from the rating , that is rate given to each call lines and the time  by the inaccuracy of the billing system

·         Poor customer service: Most of the billing systems have poor customer service thereby not given room for customer complaint and attention to their complaints therefore, a Report Generation system will be developed for the user and management of eBilling and Invoicing System. This system will have both details and summary type reports for analysis of the data calculated.

·         Security and Simplicity: Customer, Products, and Billing Generation i.e. it will Automate the current manual bill generation system and maintain the searchable customer, charge database and charge invoice, maintain the data security, user rights.

1.3       AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of this project is to create an application that should provide service to the user, collect user usage records, and generate invoices of each credit expire, each billing cycle depends on the billing type, collect payments and adjust customers' balances.

The main objectives of the project are:

·          To illustrate and analyze the basic billing system and the main functionalities that surround the billing system from a business prospective and explains how each interacts to complete the billing cycle.

·         To develop a billing system emulator that can bill more quickly and accurately.

·         To update customer record

·         To develop a billing system that enables customer to view bill information.

1.7              METHODOLOGY

Visual basic.Net was used for the implementation of this e-billing system and invoice emulator, which is one of the latest programming software used now with modern features and it helps users to view the Graphic user interface (GUI). Microsoft access was used for the backend to store customer database which include their respective details:

Front end: Visual basic.NET

Back end: Microsoft access

VISUAL BASIC USED FOR THE PROJECT

Visual basic is a programming language that translates an abstract idea into a program design we can see on screens. Visual basic presents a three step approach for creating programs which are:

a)         To design the appearance of the application

b)      Assign property settings to the objects of your program.

c)      Write the code to direct specific tasks at runtime.

The advantages of Visual Basic [18]:

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