DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN E-BILLING SYSTEM

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Department of Computer Science

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN E-BILLING SYSTEM

ABSTRACT

The project is to create an application that should provide service to the user, collect user usage records, and generate invoices of each credit expire, each billing cycle depends on the billing type, collect payments and adjust customers' balances.

The e-Billing system has the capacity to illustrate and analyze the basic billing system and the main functionalities that surround the billing system from a business prospective and explains how each interacts to complete the billing cycle.

Also, development of a billing system emulator that is capable of can billing more quickly, accurately and update customer record and enables customer to view bill information.

This Billing system can be deployed in a real world situation. For example, it could be implemented for a telecommunication company to have effective billing of the customer and it could also be deployed as contractor to already existing networks.

Hopefully, at the end of the day the program will be able to satisfied the under listed objectives that would bridge the gap on short coming in the billing system

1.      Services: Service is the entity offered by the company and targeted to the customers.

2.      Accounts: The customer account includes customer contact profile information, account type, login information, and payment method

3.      Ratings: Rating is the process of converting usage records from one form to another, like converting usage units to its cost.

4.      Payments: Each customer in the system has an account balance, which affects any invoices requested by the customer and any payments done by the customer.

5.      Invoices: It is the entity generated by the billing system to inform the customer that he must pay for his service usage or ordering

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION                                                                               

11      Background Information

12           Statements of Problem

13      Aims and Objectives   

14           Methodology

141     Deployment

15        Significance of Study  

16           Limitations

17      Organization of Report

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW                                                                 

21 Introduction

22 Brief History

23 Past Project On The Billing System

24 Problem Of Existing System

25 Characterstic Of The Proposed System

26 The Billing System

27 Billing Types

28 Structures For Tariff And Charging

29 Database  

291 Database Server

292 Relational Database Management System

210 Programming

2101 Object-Oriented Programming

CHAPTER THREE:            ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

31      Introduction

32      System Analysis

33      The E-Billing And Invoice System Emulator Overview

34      Requirements Specification

341   Functional Requirements

342   Non-Functional Requirements

343   User Requirements      

344   System Requirements

35      System Design 

351   System Modeling

3511 Use Case

3512 Sequence Diagram

3513 Activity Flow Diagram

35 14 Class Diagram

352   Database Design

3521 The User Info Table   

3522 Data Plans Table

3523 Logs Table

35      Summary         

CHAPTER FOUR: SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION AND TESTING           

41      Introduction

42      The System Requirements       

421   Software Requirement

422   Hardware Requirements          

43      Software Implementation

44      Software Testing

45             Database Implementation

46          Summary        

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

51     Summary         

52      Achievements  

53      Challenges And Constraints

54      Conclusion

55      Recommendation

List of Figures

List of Tables

Reference

Appendix

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

E-billing is the delivery of electronic bills to end consumers (B2C) and providing a payment option for them [1] and it can simply be explained as a technology which enables the replacement of paper with electronic documents delivered through email or a website [8]

Telecommunication Billing is a process of collecting credit usage, aggregating it, applying required charges and finally generating invoices for the customersTelecom Billing process also includes receiving and recording payments from the customers[2]The billing process involves receiving billing records from various networks, determining the billing rates associated with the billing records, calculating the cost for each billing record, aggregating these records periodically to generate invoices, sending invoices to the customer, and collecting payments received from the customer[2]

11       BACKGROUND INFORMATION

What is the billing system?

The billing systems process the usage of network equipment that is used during the service usage into a single Call Detail Record (CDR) [1] In GSM 1900, traditionally in North America, the mobile user pays for both incoming and outgoing calls The reason being that one subscriber cannot tell if the other subscriber is a mobile subscriber because of the American integrated numbering plan [2]  GSM specifications do not govern tariffs or packages because each operator decides this This project will be focusing on billing system and the main difference between common and basic billing system usually used in telecommunication It will involve analyzing the basic billing system from a management and business point of view and describing the basic functionalities

We can divide the system into five parts as follows [1]:

1      Services: Service is the entity offered by the company and targeted to the customers

2      Accounts: The customer account includes customer contact profile information, account type, login information, and payment method

3      Ratings: Rating is the process of converting usage records from one form to another, like converting usage units to its cost

4      Payments: Each customer in the system has an account balance, which affects any invoices requested by the customer and any payments done by the customer

5      Invoices: It is the entity generated by the billing system to inform the customer that he must pay for his service usage or ordering

13        STATEMENTS OF PROBLEM

·         Overcharging: In telecommunication, the billing system is a very sensitive part and it is faced with a lot of challenges like the overcharging which makes customers/ users complain This problem may arise from the rating , that is rate given to each call lines and the time  by the inaccuracy of the billing system

·         Poor customer service: Most of the billing systems have poor customer service thereby not given room for customer complaint and attention to their complaints therefore, a Report Generation system will be developed for the user and management of eBilling and Invoicing System This system will have both details and summary type reports for analysis of the data calculated

·         Security and Simplicity: Customer, Products, and Billing Generation ie it will Automate the current manual bill generation system and maintain the searchable customer, charge database and charge invoice, maintain the data security, user rights

13       AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of this project is to create an application that should provide service to the user, collect user usage records, and generate invoices of each credit expire, each billing cycle depends on the billing type, collect payments and adjust customers' balances

The main objectives of the project are:

·          To illustrate and analyze the basic billing system and the main functionalities that surround the billing system from a business prospective and explains how each interacts to complete the billing cycle

·         To develop a billing system emulator that can bill more quickly and accurately

·         To update customer record

·         To develop a billing system that enables customer to view bill information

17              METHODOLOGY

Visual basicNet was used for the implementation of this e-billing system and invoice emulator, which is one of the latest programming software used now with modern features and it helps users to view the Graphic user interface (GUI) Microsoft access was used for the backend to store customer database which include their respective details:

Front end: Visual basicNET

Back end: Microsoft access

VISUAL BASIC USED FOR THE PROJECT

Visual basic is a programming language that translates an abstract idea into a program design we can see on screens Visual basic presents a three step approach for creating programs which are:

a)         To design the appearance of the application

b)      Assign property settings to the objects of your program

c)      Write the code to direct specific tasks at runtime

The advantages of Visual Basic [18]