Products and Rates

Learn how to create and manage products and rates in CIS.

Suppliers offer their Customers competitive pricing for their energy commodities and Customer services. This is called product in CIS. A Product is comprised of two components - a commodity and service(s) offered to Customers, and a Rate Package containing Rate Details for generating charges to bill Customers.

Relationship between Product and Rate

  • The very basic unit of product is rate. A user can create Rate Details from the Client Rate Administration screen. Form more information, see Creating and Managing Rate Details.
  • Rates are of several types. For Example: Meter charge, Electric Energy charge, NSF charge, Natural Gas Energy Rate, Late fee charge etc.
  • A user can group together several rate details and create a rate package. Form more information, see Creating and Managing Rate Packages.

    A rate package may have different kinds of rate details bundled together.

    For Example: Meter rate and electric energy rate can be grouped to form a rate Package. Another set of rates can be grouped to form a different rate package and so on.

  • Rate package is applied while creating products. Form more information, see Creating and Managing Products

    Products are salable service items which have clearly defined Customers, commodity being sold (Gas or electricity), any special offer, service start date, service end date and other product related details.

    An example of product name may be - "Resi_noetf". This product is for residential Customers and is offering no fee for early termination of contract. This product has an appropriate rate package applied. Similarly, there can be another product created and a rate package applied to it.
    Note: Users can have any product name of their choice. It is a good practice to name products in such a way so that it is easy to identify them later.
  • When a product is sold and applied to a Customer, an instance of that product is created for that particular Customer, such an instance is called Rate Transition.

    If there are 100 Customers buying the same product, there are a 100 unique rate transitions created, one for each Customer.

    On the day the service starts, these rate transitions unpacks all the rate information and other product information to be applied on that account.

    The Customer ontinues to receive invoices as per the rate details/charge details defined in the rate packages for the particular product. This continues till the service end date is reached.

  • When the service end date is reached the product ceases to be valid on that Customer. The next action is as per the "Rollover Product" defined on that product.
    "Rollover product" defines which is the next product that is applied on the Customer after the expiry of the term of the existing product. The Customer is rolled over accordingly.
    Note: The "Rollover Product" can be the existing product, in this case the Customer is re assigned on the same product. This continues till the Customer or the premise is active.

    The "Rollover Product" can be the existing product, in this case the Customer is re assigned on the same product. This continues till the Customer or the premise is active.

    Illustration of the relationship between rate and product.