As Connectivity Costs is one of our most in-demand workflows, we've spent some extra time this quarter to address a much-requested change from our users: Billing Cycle Day and Contract End Dates have now been moved down from the Provider level to the Cost Group level within the provider. Read on.

Billing Cycles and Contract End dates are now a Cost Group level attribute

The main pet peeve our users had was that it is pretty common to have multiple IP Transit contracts with the same provider with a different billing date and contract end date. This was indeed a design flaw on our end when we initially released the workflow, and we're pleased to announce we have now corrected it.

All provider contract dates have been transferred to the child cost group objects within all providers and you can now modify them at will at a cost group level.

Let's see what it looks like, as the impacts on the Connectivity Cost workflow UI are multiple.

The new Cost Group Settings panel now contains Billing Cycle Start Date and Contract End Date fields. 

These are now visible on the cost group cards within a provider.

Provider Cards in the Provider Management screen now display these dates as part of each Cost Group entry.

The landing page Calendar Side panel now shows cards that correspond to cost groups, instead of providers, when it comes to Invoices Due and Contract Expiries. 

On the Provider Details Screen, cost groups with a Billing Cycle Date in the past are displayed in solid color, while the ones with a Billing Cycle Date in the future are displayed as estimates with a striped color. 

All Cost Group entries on the Provider Details table now show a progress bar displaying how far from the Billing Cycle Date each Cost Group is at the time of viewing, with a color that varies as we get closer to the billing date.

Download the entire SNMP Sample Set for Billing reconciliation

What do you do when the Kentik cost displayed at the end of your billing cycle doesn't match your providers' invoice? Generally, you enter a dispute which requires you to provide your own calculation together with the SNMP 5min samples it's based on.

We have made this possible in this addition to the Cost Group side panel in a providers' screen, where in the click of a button, the entire set of data samples for all interfaces (In and Out) gets generated as a CSV file for you to look at, also containing interface names, descriptions, device...

...and wait, there's more

While at it, we've also made the "Suggested Provider" right-side panel collapsible for those of our users did not want to see it in the Manage Providers screen: