Off-peak Periods

An off-peak period is a time when there is least demand for a service. For this reason, prices during off-peak times are often lower than at peak times.

In PortaBilling®, off-peak period rates can also be used for a time when a demand for a service is highest (e.g. rush hours, religious or national holidays). To define whether a service is used during a peak or off-peak period, PortaBilling® checks the customer / vendor configuration.

Thus to calculate charges for a customer according to their peak / off-peak rates, PortaBilling® checks that customer’s billing time zone. This is applicable to both incoming and outgoing calls.

Then to calculate charges for vendors according to their peak / off-peak rates, PortaBilling® checks the web self-care time zone of the vendor who terminates the call.

The Off-Peak Periods tab shows a list of all existing off-peak periods. This list provides the following information:

Field	Description
Name	The logical name for off-peak period.
Description	Human-readable description of the off-peak period (e.g. “From 21:00 until 09:00, Working Days”).
Managed By	Administrator only (default) means that this off-peak period is accessible only to your administrators. If an off-peak period is available to a reseller then you can see here the name of the reseller, who has an access to this off-peak period.
Test Period	The test utility allows you to check whether you have created a correct off-peak period definition or not. In order to run the off-peak period test, click the Test Period icon.
Delete	Click the Delete icon to remove the off-peak period from the list. The delete button will only appear if this off-peak period is not used in “Tariffs” or “Rates”.

To define a new off-peak period, click the Add button.

Peak and off-peak prices

It is possible to have two different sets of prices, one for peak and one for off-peak time. In fact, you can have two separate off-peak periods (e.g. nighttime and weekends), meaning there are three separate sets of prices. A call is always billed using one particular rate; this also applies to calls starting in the off-peak period and ending in the peak period, or vice versa, i.e. there is no proration.

Off-peak periods are defined using the powerful yet flexible Time::Period module. The Off-Peak Period Wizard is also available to help you create a period definition easily.

You can create a master list of various off-peak periods (e.g. one from 9pm to 7am including weekends and another from 8pm to 8am daily) and then use these definitions for specific tariffs or rates inside the tariff.