This page describes the On premise billing in comparison to the Abiquo billing integration
Diagram of on premise billing in Abiquo 6.1
The following diagram shows the on-premise billing integration together with the Abiquo CSV generator module.
Comparison of on-premise billing and Abiquo billing integration
On premise billing (new) | Abiquo billing integration (old) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Abiquo usage metering | Abiquo usage metering | Both billing systems use the same Abiquo accounting services integration for usage metering |
Integrated | Separate system. A separate install on a separate server was required. | Documentation is now in the Abiquo infrastructure guide under Abiquo billing. You can configure billing in the UI and the Abiquo API runs billing and stores data in the Abiquo database. See Configure on premise billing. After you fully transition to on-premise billing, you can uninstall the old Abiquo billing integration. |
Hourly usage per day, billed monthly from start to end of calendar month, with UTC time | Hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, billed monthly on any day | The new monthly billing is simpler to use and follows the market standard. Pricing will still support old accounting periods for billing with previous pricing models. |
Automatic billing of enterprises with pricing model | Map enterprises/VDCs to accounts with SQL. | You can enter account IDs using enterprise properties, or tags for VDCs. You can push enterprise properties to VMs as variables. |
Automatically use current enteprises for billing | Configure a job to maintain account mapping for enterprises or VDCs to bill | After you transition to the new billing, you can stop the abiquo-billing-mapping job |
Pricing with new cost codes to support custom usages and new price factors. The upgrade will convert price factors | Custom usages were created with custom MySQL and price factors were created with enterprise properties. | After you transition to on-premise billing, you can remove the old enterprise properties for price factors. |
In API or DB. In a coming version, Abiquo will introduce cost usage endpoints with reports for on-premise billing | Output to CSV, or DBMS with CSV generator | In Abiquo 6.1, you can install (or continue to use) the Abiquo CSV generator to obtain a CSV file. |
Integrated billing dashboards | Private billing module to populate dashboard was installed separately | Before you enable on-premise billing, stop the abiquo-private-billing cron job |
Billing by usage only | Billing by usage or allocation | Billing by allocation will be introduced in a future version |
No hypervisor usage | Hypervisor usage | Hypervisor usage is deprecated |
Backup GB by backup size as standard usage for billing for Veeam | Backup GB by VM size with custom billing configuration | The platform now stores Backup GB usage as an accounting usage. For billing, enable the Backup GB usage |
New cost code types and cost code units. See Manage extra charges with cost codes and Manage enterprise products | Custom usage with MySQL | Note: In Abiquo 6.1.0 there is a known issue with accounting for one-time cost codes. |
Billing log output is in the API logs | Separate logs for com.abiquo.billing | You can configure the same log levels of "DEBUG", "INFO", "WARN", and "ERROR". |
Cron job runs billing nightly. It is the same job as for integrated public billing. | Cron job runs billing each week | To configure the cron job that runs on-premise billing use an Abiquo property. When you transition to on-premise billing, you can stop the old abiquo-billing cron job |
Easily regenerate billing for an enterprise or reseller in the UI. Abiquo property limits billing generation per enterprise/day | Regenerate billing with a script | The platform generates billing nightly, plus a user can generate once per day by default. You can configure the maximum number of times the user can generate billing with an Abiquo property |
Pricing history stores one price per month. The administrator can update the pricing for the month in the UI, which will also regenerate billing for the current month. If the administrator does not manually update pricing, new prices will apply in the next month | No pricing history. Billing is regenerated with current prices | In the Pricing view, the button is called Regenerate billing, because it will update prices and regenerate billing for the current month |
You can regenerate billing in the user interface for an enterprise or selected reseller enterprises. The button to regenerate billing is on the Billing tab when you edit an enterprise. The process to regenerate billing uses the prices from the pricing history for the month that you are regenerating billing for. | You can regenerate billing manually with a script. The platform regenerates all billing with current prices. | You can select an enterprise or a reseller and/or their customers to regenerate billing for, as for public cloud. Note: enter the correct period because if you enter a period with no usage, the platform may generate a standing charge and minimum charge. |