For many customers, it will be necessary to establish automatic payments or account balance monitoring in order to maintain a positive prepaid balance as charges accrue on your account. This article covers everything you need to know about how account balance charges work and how to manage your balance.
How do Account Balance Charges Work?
SIP.US does not require customers to add funds to an account balance when setting up a new account. This is because billing is handled separately for new orders and paying monthly service invoices. However, there are multiple scenarios in which SIP.US will deduct per-minute calling charges from an account balance.
- Outbound international calls or calls to Alaska or Hawaii.
- Overage fees apply to all call traffic once a SIP trunk with a monthly prepaid minutes billing package exceeds the number of pre-purchased minutes.
- All inbound call traffic to a toll-free number that is not routed through a SIP trunk with a toll-free specific minutes package.
How to Inspect Charges in Call Detail Records (CDRs)
Navigate to the CDRs in the customer portal to see which calls incurred charges to the account balance. To view the CDRs, hover over the SIP Trunking menu tab and select the “Call Detail Records” submenu option.
The charges appear in the “Cost” column and will only be listed if applied to the account balance. If your monthly billing service plan includes unlimited calling and the calls in question are included in that plan, the call cost value for domestic North American (NA) calls will be $0.0000. If you have not exceeded your monthly minutes package, the call cost value for domestic NA calls will display as $0.0000.
What Happens When an Account Balance Turns Negative?
SIP.US allows for a small negative balance ($5.00 USD) to accrue before placing an account-wide freeze on all call traffic. This means you would be unable to make or receive any calls. This is why SIPTRUNK recommends setting up Auto Replenish and Low Balance Notifications in the customer portal to avoid any service interruption from a negative prepaid account balance.
NOTE: SIP.US does not store CDRs once a call freeze occurs, so you will not see any failed calls in the account CDRs. You will need to make a payment and make the account balance positive before CDRs populate again.
Auto Replenish and Low Balance Notifications Explained and How to Set Up
SIP.US offers two methods to manage your account balance and avoid potential service interruptions: Auto Replenish and Low Balance Notifications. Both options are available via the Payment Center in the customer portal.
The recommended course of action is to set up Auto Replenish, which will automatically add funds to your account once the balance drops below the value that you define. This prevents the account balance from ever going negative, as long as your payment method is valid. Auto Replenish adds funds via your preferred payment method on file.
To enable Auto Replenish, hover over “Payment Center” and choose the “Auto Replenish” submenu option. Toggle “AutoReplenish Status” to “On” along with setting any preferred “Threshold” or “Amount” values and you’re all set.
Low Balance Notifications are another useful tool for tracking account balance charges. This feature allows you to define the notification balance threshold value and the system will email you every time the balance falls below that value. SIP.US recommends enabling both Auto Replenish and Low Balance Notifications.
To enable Low Balance Notifications, hover over “Payment Center” and choose the “Auto Replenish” submenu option. Toggle “Notification Status” to “On” along with setting the preferred “Threshold” and you’re all set.
NOTE: There is a limit of one email address that can be associated with Low Balance Notifications. If you require a workaround, we recommend setting up a dedicated email address that can serve as a distribution forwarding list to multiple emails.
Once you have both of these settings configured, your account will be set to avoid negative balance issues. For more information on call pricing related to your account balance, please refer to this article on How to Check International and Per-Minute Rates or reach out to our Sales or Billing teams.