How Split Billing Can Benefit Call Accounting Activities
March 16, 2015
By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
The arrival of the smartphone dramatically changed the way we live and work, allowing access to all things entertainment, communication and business document related regardless of location. So integrated are these devices today between our personal and business lives that companies are adopting programs that allow us to use our own devices while on the job. On the outside, it looks like a great way to control costs. On the inside, it can be a challenge for call accounting.
These programs, known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) allow employees to select their own personal device for professional use. Companies shift the responsibility for ownership and payment to the employee, yet a process for covering the cost to the employee has to be developed. Split billing is often the outcome, yet those responsible for the process internally are often confused about the details.
Split billing, or the breakdown of a bill for service into two or more parts is becoming more common in the telecommunications industry, especially as companies figure out the best approach to BYOD. The main reason for its use is to determine whether the company or the user should be charged for a service. In the case of the smartphone, companies want to know whether the user is downloading data for personal use or to support work-related activities.
In each scenario, the employee is bringing their own device, yet leveraging the service provisions the company already has in place with a provider. Companies care about the answers as they want to know where they are liable for payment and where employees should be held accountable. They also want to know if stipends are given to employees to support a data bill, if that stipend is treated as a taxable benefit. Liability is also a question as companies can’t always control what employees are doing and could compromise liability if they do something wrong.
Author Will Kelly tackled this issue in a recent Tech Republic piece. The idea around split billing is to properly show who is responsible for what usage. In theory, it can make call accounting and telecom expense tracking more streamlined. The key is to clearly identify what needs to be split and how. In Kelly’s piece, the split is enabled through an app that tracks all activity and produces the desired information to do the split. The idea could be expanded even further, using an app as the primary communication source of a device and all activity is done through the app or not at all.
Ultimately, users are interested in keeping their own devices and protecting the information they keep. Companies are interested in proper billing, the ability to wipe devices remotely and enable productive users. If split billing is correctly designed and implemented according to the needs of the parties involved, the outcome is better call accounting and telecom expense tracking.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi