Understanding Your Voice/SMS Text Messaging Usage Invoices Follow

Understanding Your Monthly Voice/SMS Usage Invoices

As a legal CRM customer, you may receive monthly usage-based billing depending on consumed services.  Certain vendors may bill you via monthly invoicing for usage-based services that will be passed through on your monthly legal CRM bill according to the terms of service/Subscriber Agreement.

Usage of telecom services will be billed to your account directly and passed through by the telecom provider for any Voice/SMS services for calls, phone numbers, text/MMS messaging, or related services.  This billing will be passed through on your monthly legal CRM invoice.  All services are usage-based and are metered based on how much of these services your business consumes each month.

Any compliance fees from phone carriers will be passed directly onto each customer's usage bills and are the responsibility of each client. For more about carrier compliance fees, click here.

SMS/MMS messages longer than 158 characters will be divided into segments, each billed at the per-segment price, as this is how the phone carriers bill for messaging.  

Product Usage Account Summary

The product usage summary on the front page of your invoice summarizes usage across all items to show a high-level summary per product group.  Each product listed represents the total usage costs billed in each invoice and any applicable non-product line items, such as taxes or regulatory fees.

To view a current or past voice/SMS usage invoice at any time, please visit Reports -> Voice/SMS Usage inside your legal CRM system.  Note: this requires reports or admin access permissions.

Voice/Messaging/Related Usage Products are categorized as follows:

Usage Details FAQ

Since seeing the usage details may prompt some additional questions, we are taking this opportunity to answer some common queries here:

Q: How are my usage prices determined?
A: Telecom usage prices are calculated based on the volume of your firm each month and are subject to rate changes at any time depending on your firm's volume and various changes by the wireless phone carriers depending on regulatory, government action, and other telco industry events, service fees, and taxes.  In addition, the legal CRM bundles certain telecom services traditionally broken down into a series of product categories to simplify invoicing as much as possible.

Q: Why am I being charged for phone numbers, even though I didn't purchase any this month?
A: Phone numbers have a monthly rental fee that is charged each month until the phone number is released.   A phone number may be released at any time. Still, please be aware that releasing a phone number is permanent and irrevocable since, upon release, the number goes back to the general public and can be purchased at any time by another company.  This is not recommended unless you are certain that you will never need a phone number again. 

If you would like to move a number outside of the legal CRM service to another company, you may do what is known as "port out" the number and take ownership of it directly, but there is a service fee of $25 per number ported out.

Q: When and why are taxes charged?
A: The telecom provider calculates and charges taxes at the end of each month for usage incurred throughout the previous month. Taxes are assessed based on your business address provided. 

Q: I see charges for more SMS "messages" than I sent. Why is that?
A: The telecom carriers break a long SMS into smaller segments of 158 characters or less. Each "segment" is charged at the rate of one SMS. The invoice shows the total segments used. 
Learn more about the technical details behind SMS/MMS message segments.

Q: What Are "Call Features" and why are they on my usage bill?
A: As of October 1st, 2022, compliance and additional per-minute fees resulting from new legislation are now being passed through by the phone carriers that make up the telecom ecosystem. Because of these unavoidable changes, your usage bill will have a few new items you may not recognize from prior months. Call features are per-minute fees for using the Smart Dialer to make or receive calls and include call monitoring, call transfers, bridge calls, and other features across the ecosystem. As your trusted provider, Law Ruler has worked tirelessly to keep your rates as low as possible for voice/SMS communications. If you have any questions about these changes, don't hesitate to contact our support team; they will be happy to help! Thank you for your patience and continued support as the telecom ecosystem evolves.

Q: Why do I see differences between my invoice and the Voice/SMS Reports/logs?
A: The telecom provider always uses the UTC timezone for invoicing purposes. User accounts set to use a local (non-UTC) timezone will likely see differences in the usage captured in product logs on the first and last days of the month.   In addition, the billing system at the telecom provider works in 5 decimals places, i.e., $0.00001 precision. However, for simplicity, invoices are rounded to two decimals, i.e., $0.01 precision. This might cause a mismatch in fractions of a cent for a line item between invoices.

Support/Assistance

If you need further assistance with your legal CRM system, then please contact Support.

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