A cost with no customer
A customer moves to another provider. Their numbers port away, your billing platform marks their account as closed, and the final invoice goes out. Months later, someone going through the voice wholesaler's invoice notices a set of hosted seats with a company name that rings a bell. They left a long time ago. The seats were never ceased, so you have been paying for them ever since.
It is the same story with broadband at a closed site, a SIM from a leaver on a mobile account, an analogue line kept 'just in case' for a lift or alarm that was later moved over, or a spare number range bought for a customer that went elsewhere.
Each one is small, which is exactly why they survive.
Why ceases get missed
Stopping a charge to the customer and stopping a cost from the supplier are two separate actions, often done by two different people.
- Billing is closed by finance when the final invoice goes out; the supplier cease is a provisioning job.
- A port-out is triggered by the gaining provider, so there is no internal request to prompt the cease.
- Some services are not ported but also not ceased automatically, such as associated lines, add-ons and licences.
- Partial cancellations (a few users removed, one site closed) are easy to apply to billing and forget with the supplier.
- Supplier invoices are checked in total, not line by line against live customers.
How orphaned costs add up
| Missed cease | Result |
|---|---|
| Hosted seats of a lost customer | Monthly cost with no revenue |
| Broadband at a closed site | Paid until the supplier term ends and beyond |
| Leaver's SIM on a mobile account | Line rental, sometimes usage too |
| Old analogue line left live | Cost for a service nobody uses |
| Supplier term longer than customer term | Early cease charge, or cost to term end |
The monthly amounts are small, but they run for as long as nobody looks, and when they are found the supplier will rarely refund more than a short period back.
The cease tracking we build
- Every customer service is linked to the supplier service behind it: seat, line, circuit, SIM or number range, with the supplier's reference.
- A cancellation, partial cancellation or port-out notification creates a cease task for each linked supplier service, with the date it should take effect and any supplier notice period.
- Tasks go to provisioning with the supplier reference ready, so placing the cease takes minutes. Where a supplier accepts ceases by API, the task can place it with a person's approval.
- Confirmation from the supplier closes the task. No confirmation by the expected date raises a reminder.
- Each month, supplier invoice lines are matched against live customer services. Any supplier cost with no live customer behind it is listed for review.
- Where the supplier term runs past the customer term, the tool shows it at the time of sale and again at cancellation, so the decision to cease early or reuse the service is made consciously.
After it is in place
A cancellation has a visible trail: billing closed, supplier cease requested, supplier cease confirmed. The monthly supplier invoice check lists only lines that do not match a live customer, which is usually a short list with an obvious cause.
Finance stop discovering old costs by accident, and when you tidy up an acquired customer base the same matching shows what you are paying for that nobody is using.
Provisioning also gets a cleaner picture of what is live with each supplier. When a supplier asks you to confirm your base before a price change or a platform migration, the list already exists, and you are not paying to migrate services that should have been switched off years ago. The same record answers the customer who rings to ask whether their old site line was really stopped, with the date and the supplier's confirmation next to it.
Is this happening in your business?
- You have found supplier charges for customers who left long ago.
- Port-outs close billing but do not prompt a supplier cease.
- Supplier invoices are checked in total, not line by line.
- Partial cancellations are applied to billing only.
- No one could list every supplier service with no customer behind it.