Account Plan Management

Introduction

This guide is to help you understand the Account Plan Details screen. This screen allows you to view how your account plan is charged and what changes you can make that can increase or reduce your charge giving you full control over what functionality you require from iBex.

Account Details

To activate this screen, you need to be in the Account Details screen which can be selected from the Account Details menu option in the Settings / Account menu group. Click on the Plan Details & Support Contact link at the top of the screen as shown:

This will launch the Account Details screen into its own window as shown on the next page. In this example, the account plan selected is the PMS Professional (M) where the M is for a monthly invoice cycle. Other invoice cycles are quarterly and annual. If you wish to change your invoice cycle, contact Seekom Support. However you can change between plans in the same family of plans as shown below:

In this example, we can change to Entry or Enterprise plan. Changing plans will not commit you to that plan but will refresh the screen with adjusted pricing for that plan. If you do wish to commit to a plan change, simply select it and then click the Save button.

Note that changing down a plan may actually increase the price if you have a large number of channels and/or functions selected. Conversely you may find that selecting a higher plan could reduce the price for the same reason.

The effect of changing plans will be described in more detail below. Note the ? icon – click this to be shown a description of the selected plan.

You will see that the screen is divided into the component Subplans. These are described below:

Resource Subplan

This plan sets the charges based on the resources used in iBex. Resources consist of account, properties, units, channels and users as seen on the top right of resource plan screen.

• Account. This is essentially the account or base fee that is charged before any other resources are listed. In this example the account fee is $89.00. Pricing will only change if the account plan is changed and will go up for Enterprise and down for Entry.
  
  
• Property. This is the number of properties registered in the account. In this example, we have 3 properties but there are not sufficient number to attract an additional fee.
  
  
• Unit. This is the number of chargeable units and the charge for that number of units. Chargeable units differ from physical units depending on the unit type and the base unit type is the self contained unit. For example, a non self contained unit is charged less per unit than a self contained unit. Currently 1 self contained unit = 1 chargeable unit and 2 non self contained units = 1 chargeable unit.
  
  
• Channel. The number of sales channel or OTA connections for the account. In this example there are no channels. Depending on the plan, the first x number of channels may be free but as the number of channel connections increase, it can attract a higher charge.
  
  
• Users. The number of active user accounts. There is no charge for this. For information only.
  
  
• Adjusting resource numbers. The fields to the left allow you to overwrite the current resource numbers with any other number so you can see the effect on your pricing. For example, you may want to add more channels or add more units. To do this, simply overtype the number with the new number and click the ‘Calculate’ button at the bottom of the screen.
  
  

The screen will refresh with the new pricing but the changes will not be saved. They are for calculation only. To revert back to the original numbers, click the ’Reset’ button also at the bottom of the page. The ’Save’ button will actually have the same result as ’Refresh’ for this subplan as the true numbers are always derived or calculated from within the system.

Functionality Subplan

As the name implies, this controls the functionality you wish to use in iBex. The functions are listed in 3 column groups and a tick in the tick box to the right of the function name indicates that this function is active for your account.

Note that the example presented is for demonstration only and may not reflect the real options available to your selected plan.

To the right of the tick box is any fee associated with that function (eg. in this example, Custom Fields has a charge of $10). At the bottom of the functionality screen you will see the total number of selected or ticked options and of those how many are chargeable. To the right you will see the total Options Fee. For this example, we have 18 selected options of which 5 are chargeable resulting in a total functionality subplan charge of $100.

To see a quick summary of a function item, mouse over the option name. To get full details of what the option can do for you, click on the option and a full description will be displayed in a popup window as per the example below for the Promo Codes option:

To see the effect of changing options, either tick or de-tick options as required and then click the ’Calculate’ button at the bottom of the screen. This will update the totals at the bottom and display a new price if fee based options have been changed. Note that higher plans will reduce the number of chargeable options and lower plans will increase the number of chargeable options (ie. more features are included in base plan price). So if you are interested in selecting a number of chargeable options, you may be better to try a higher plan as this may be a more cost effective option.

To see the effect of changing plan, simply select a new Account Plan at the top of the screen and click the ’Calculate’ button. You will then see the changed pricing of this subplan.

If you want to save any changes you have made to the options in the functionality subplan, simply click ’Save’ rather than ’Calculate’ and the changes will be committed. However note that removing functionality should be done with care as it may have unintended consequences. If you are not sure, contact support for advice.

Website Subplan

This is only applicable for those who have their CMS website hosted by Seekom. As you can have one or more websites, this may show multiple entries. Unlike the other sub plans, this cannot be changed – only viewed. If you need changes to this plan, please contact support.

Support Subplan

This allows you to upgrade your standard free plan to priority or vice versa. The Expiry field is view only and is only applicable for new accounts who receive 1 month complimentary priority support free of charge. After this date, the support reverts to standard support. Again, to see the effect of changing the plan, simply select it and click the ’Calculate’ button.

Summary

This section brings summarises all the Subplans to show you the total charge for your account and is view only. It also shows if you are entitled to any discount and when the next invoice will be. This is the best section to view when changing multiple Subplans so that you can see the total effect on pricing.

If you do make a change to your plan part way through your billing cycle, you will receive a pro-rata invoice crediting you for the charges applicable to the unused period but debiting you for the new charges for the remaining or unused period. The same may apply if you do not change the plan but change any of the resource item counts (eg. add or delete a property, channel, or units.

Helpful Videos

iBex Account Plan Overview
iBex Account Plan Changes