How to Include or Exclude Templates in Billing or Pay Models

Overview

When creating a Billing Model or Pay Model in the InfraWare Management Console (IMC), an administrator can choose to exclude template text from the counting.  (This is performed under the Administration/Billing Models tab.  There is a checkbox to Exclude Template Text on each model.) For maximum flexibility, there are actually several combinations for defining which text to include.  In these combinations, special consideration is given to text contained in headers and footers.

Solution

How Characters & Lines are Counted

• When Billing (or Pay) Models are applied to count lines for completed documents, the platform needs to determine what text to include. The fundamental options to include or exclude are:
  
  • The text contained in the base template (prior to typing)
  • The headers and footers

• In general, when a Billing Model is configured to EXCLUDE template text, the platform counts the characters in the finished document and subtracts the characters contained in the base template.  The logic contained in the Billing Model (line definition and billing rate) is then applied to that net character or line count. 

• Net Billing Units = Finished Document Units - Based Template Units

• When a Billing (or Pay) Model does NOT EXCLUDE template text, the platform simply skips the step of subtracting the text contained in the base template.  See below for special options regarding headers and footers.

Including or Excluding Header & Footer Text from Line Counts

• Special treatment is applied for including or excluding the headers and footers.  The inclusion of headers and footers
  is even an option when template text is NOT being excluded.  When a template is saved to the platform using the InfraWare Template Editor (ITE), the user is presented with some checkboxes about whether to include:

• First Page Header
• First Pager Footer
• Regular Header
• Regular Footer

• Those checkboxes are presented twice: Once for the finished Document and once for the base Template.  When they are selected for the document, text for the headers or footers are included in the count for the finished report (which raises the count for billing or pay).  On the other hand, when they are included in the base template count, which increases the count of the number of units to be subtracted when excluding template text.  In other words, that reduces the count for billing or pay.