Getting started with A2Billing

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Getting started with A2Billing – Part 1 Setting up a trunk
In this series of articles I’m going to run through how to get up your a2billing system up and running.  A2billing is an opensource billing application for Asterisk and can be used in many different ways – I’ll be documenting just some examples  
Some of this setup will depend how you have your main configuration file (/etc/asterisk/a2billing.conf) configured. I will not be discussing that here. Also some of the setup may rely on FreePBX and A2billing being setup to work together.
All of this documentation was created on a sysadminman Asterisk/FreePBX/A2billing VPS. See here for details – http://sysadminman.net/uk-voip-vps.html
Setting up a trunk
We need to setup a trunk to be used for our outbound calls. Obviously you can setup more than one trunk and route calls to different destinations via different trunks.
I will be using the trunk that I configured in FreePBX here – http://sysadminman.net/blog/archives/335. As the main settings for the trunk have been setup in FreePBX we can just call the trunk by it’s name in A2Billing. This trunk is with a provider called callwithus.
To setup a trunk -
Click on TRUNK on the left hand main menu

The next thing I’m going to do is create a “Trunk Provider”. This is not essential (we can create a trunk with out creating a “provider”) but will be useful when we have many trunks and want to group them together)
So, click on “Create Provider” and give your provider a name and description – I’m using callwithus. The click Confirm Data

Now I’m going to setup the actual trunk. So click on “Add Trunk”
VOIP-PROVIDER is the one we just created
LABEL is just a text label identifying the trunk
PROVIDER TECHNOLOGY is sip (although it’s also possible to use IAX2 with callwithus I used SIP)
PROVIDER IP is the name of the trunk that I created in FreePBX here. It’s not essential to use a precreated trunk I just like all my trunks created in a single place – FreePBX
and the click Confirm Data

And that’s it. Our trunk is ready to use. We can see this by click on List Trunk

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Part 2 Ratecards and Call Plans
After we’ve created a trunk we need to create a ratecard and assign it to a call plan. This is the main part of the billing application and also the most complicated!
Initially I’m just going to create a ratecard that allows calls Leicester in the UK. The dialling code for Leicester is 0116 so the international prefix would be 44116  (44 being for the UK)
Creating a Ratecard
First click on the RATECARD menu on the left hand side of the screen
Then give your ratecard a name. I called mine “test-rate-card”
Assign the ratecard to use the trunk we created here
And click on CONFIRM DATA


Now we need to add a rate to our new ratecard. The rate is what determines how much we pay for the call and how much we charge for it.
So, click on “Add Rate”
The RATECARD will be the one we created above
The dial prefix is just for Leicester in the UK (44 = UK / 116 – Leicester)
DESTINATION is just a text description field
BUYING RATE is what I will pay for the call per minute. Callwithus prices are in $ so I will be paying just $0.014/minute.
BUYRATE MIN DURATION is the shortest time you will be billed for a call – check with your trunk provider
BUYRATE BILLING BLOCK                 is the time increment you will be billed for a call  – check with your trunk provider
SELLING RATE – this is how much you will charge per minute for the call. So I have a $0.006/minute markup on my calls to Leicester
SELLRATE MIN DURATION                  is the shortest time you will charge for a call
SELLRATE BILLING BLOCK                                  is the time increment you will charge for a call
And that’s all we need to change so click CONFIRM DATA


Creating a Call Plan
A callplan is a collection of rate cards. You might have many different rate cards with rates from many different providers and you bundle them up into a call plan and then assign the call plan to your customers.
Click on Create Call Plan
Give your call plan a name – I called mine “test-call-plan”
REMOVE INTER PREFIX has been changed to Yes. I need this because, in my rate card, my rate only has 44116 (and not the international code 00 or 011 in front of it) so if the customer dials the international access code I need to remove it.
Click on CONFIRM DATA

Now we need to go in and assign the rate card to our call plan
Click on EDIT to the right of the call plan we created

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you can see the rate cards assigned to the callplan. At this point there won’t be any.
So click on the “test-rate-card” we created and then ADD RATECARD
Now click CONFIRM DATA

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Part 3 Creating an access DID
Now we’ve got a trunk setup and a rate card and call plan we need a way for our potential customers to actually connect to our system! One way for them to do this is via an access phone number. To test this I’m going to use the IPKall DID we setup here in FreePBX.
This assumes that FreePBX has been setup with some a2billing custom destinations as described here – http://www.freepbx.org/forum/freepbx/installation/inbound-sip-trunk-doesnt-call-extensions. Sysadminman VOIP VPSs are preconfigured for this.
Setting the inbound access number (DID) in FreePBX
This is changing the access DID we created here
In FreePBX click on Inbound Routes on the left hand main menu
Then select “ipkall” (the DID we created here)

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and change the Destination to “Custom Destinations – a2billing” then click Submit

Don’t forget to click on “Apply Configuration Changes”
Now if we dial our IPKall DID we should be asked by a2billing to “Please enter your complete PIN number”

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Part 4 Creating a customer and making a call

So we’ve created a trunk to make calls through here, we’ve created a ratecard and call plan here and we’ve created an access phone number here so we’re finally ready to create a customer!
Creating a calling card customer
Click on CUSTOMERS on the left hand menu
Click Create Customers
We get a big list of options but the only things we need to set are -
BALANCE – set the inital balance for the customer
CALL PLAN – ensure the call plan is set to the one we created here
LASTNAME & FIRSTNAME – not required but definitely useful!
Then click on CONFIRM DATA



There are obviously a lot more settings I can use when configuring a customer but if I click on List Customers I can see my customer is setup

So, lets give it a go!
I ring my access number 12532433498 (configured here)
and it asks for my PIN number so I enter 1137742329  (my card number created above)
I now get the message “Please enter the number you wish to call and then enter the pound key” so  I dial 011441162572850# (remember I can only dial numbers in Leicester in the UK for now as that is the only rate we created here) and my call is made!
Now, a couple of things have also happened.
If I click on CALL REPORT and then CDR Report I can see that a record has been made of the call plus the call charges -

and also if I click on CUSTOMER, List Customers and then click on EDIT next to my customer -

and then scroll down to the bottom I can see that my CLID has been added to my customer record (this is becuase cid_enable and cid_auto_assign_card_to_cid have been enabled in a2billing.conf). This means that next time I call the system from my phone it will know who I am and I will not need to enter my pin number again.

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Part 5 Importing a ratecard
When I setup my ratecard here I only created 1 rate to Leicester in the UK. Ok for testing but not much use in the real world! So how are we going to enter all of the rates we need – the answer is to import them. Many ITSP (Internet Telephony Service Providers) publish a rate file that you can download. I’m going to use the callwithus (my provider) rate file that you can download from here.


then I’ve extracted the zip file and saved it to my C drive -
I have also rename the file to .txt instead of .csv as there can be problems with it called .csv

Now I go to RATECARD, Create new Rate Card
Give your ratecard a name and a description. I like to include the date I am creating the ratecard
and click CONFIRM DATA

Now select the Import RateCard menu
Ensure the “Choose the ratecard to import” is set to the rate card you just created
Also the callwithus import file includes “BUYRATE MIN DURATION” and “BUYRATE BILLING BLOCK” information so I have moved those 2 fields over to the “Selected Fields” box
Click on Browse to select your import file then click “Import Ratecard”

helpfully a2billing shows us an example of what it’s going to import. This is the first record in the file.
Click “Continue to Import the Ratecard” if the example looks good

a2billing should now tell you how many rates have been imported

Unfortunately if we now go and look at one of these rates we’ll see that the callwithus file wasn’t particularly well formatted to be imported into a2billing as-is.
The buy rate is zero, the selling rate is our buying cost and “SELLRATE MIN DURATION / SELLRATE BILLING BLOCK” are both zero!

So we need to sort this out. What we could have done was edit the file in something like Excel before we imported it to get everything in the correct layout. This is probably the easiest option, however I’m going to edit my ratecard using SQL in the database. Be sure you know what you’re doing if you choose this option!
First I need to log into mysql. The default database name is mya2billing – yours may differ.
# mysql -u asteriskuser -p mya2billing
Enter password:
Welcome TO the MySQL monitor.  Commands END WITH ; OR \g.
Your MySQL connection id IS 10748
Server version: 5.0.45 SOURCE distribution

TYPE 'help;' OR '\h' FOR help. TYPE '\c' TO clear the buffer.

mysql>

Next I need to find out the ID of the tarifplan I want to edit
mysql> SELECT id,tariffname FROM cc_tariffplan;
+----+---------------------+
| id | tariffname          |
+----+---------------------+
|  1 | test-rate-card      |
|  2 | callwithus 03-02-09 |
+----+---------------------+
2 ROWS IN SET (0.00 sec)

Now I’m going to set the buy rate to be the sell rate that was loaded from the import file -
mysql> UPDATE cc_ratecard SET buyrate = rateinitial WHERE idtariffplan = 2;
Query OK, 9344 ROWS affected (0.11 sec)
ROWS matched: 9345  Changed: 9344  Warnings: 0

Now I’m going to add 20% on to my sell rate -
mysql> UPDATE cc_ratecard SET rateinitial = (rateinitial*1.2) WHERE idtariffplan = 2;
Query OK, 9344 ROWS affected (0.12 sec)
ROWS matched: 9345  Changed: 9344  Warnings: 0

Now to set the “SELLRATE MIN DURATION” to the “BUYRATE MIN DURATION” that was loaded from the import file -
mysql> UPDATE cc_ratecard SET initblock = buyrateinitblock WHERE idtariffplan = 2;
Query OK, 9345 ROWS affected (0.11 sec)
ROWS matched: 9345  Changed: 9345  Warnings: 0

and finally to set “SELLRATE BILLING BLOCK” to the “BUYRATE BILLING BLOCK” that was loaded from the import file -
mysql> UPDATE cc_ratecard SET billingblock = buyrateincrement WHERE idtariffplan = 2;
Query OK, 9345 ROWS affected (0.12 sec)
ROWS matched: 9345  Changed: 9345  Warnings: 0

Now if we go and look at the rate we were looking at before it looks much better. The billing increments are all the same and my sell rate it 20% more than my buy rate!

Now I just need to go to my call plan and remove the test rate card  created earlier and add my new callwithus rate card

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Related posts:

• Getting started with A2Billing – Part 2 Ratecards and Call Plans
• Automatically create A2Billing rate card from voip.ms rate file
• Automatically create A2Billing rate card from callwithus rate file