Billing

This page describes how connectivity is billed, where you can view current and historical invoices, and reviews the components of a connectivity invoice. This page also describes how to provide and update a payment method.

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How is Sierra Wireless Connectivity priced?

You will be billed for your connectivity on a monthly basis. The billing cycle starts the first day of the month and always covers the full calendar month.

Sierra Wireless connectivity billing is split in monthly recurring charges and usages.

Depending on your contract, you may have pay-per-use pricing or bundle pricing. The pay-per-use or bundle pricing is not only related to the monthly charges.

The usages are aggregated per pricing zone before rating (I.e., transforming usages into charged amounts). Each pricing zone covers a geographical area for which the usage prices are equivalent.

Pay-per-use pricing

Pay-per-use pricing is the simplest model. In addition to paying for actual usage, you pay a Monthly Recurring Charge (MRC) based on the number of active and suspended SIMs in the account at the beginning of the month. For activations in the middle of the month, no additional recurring charge is due, and the usages will be counted against the existing offer pool. Please refer to How are initial activations billed for more information.

Bundle pricing

Bundle pricing pools usage for all active subscriptions (and suspended SIMs for non-seasonal offers ) associated with the bundle. The contract defines the allotted data amount for each subscription. If a subscription consumes less than its allotted amount of data, the data can be consumed by other subscriptions in the bundle without overage charges. You will only pay an overage when the data consumption of the entire bundle exceeds the pool size computed at the beginning of the month. Overages beyond the pool size, as well as traffic in zones other than the one covered by the bundle, will be charged as pay-per-use.

Each SIM can be associated with one single bundle defined on one specific pricing zone.

The pool size is computed based on the number of active subscriptions (and suspended subscriptions in case of non-seasonal offers) on the first day of the month. An active subscription contributes to the total data pool size by the volume of data usage defined in the contract. Usage is defined for the specified billing zone only. If you activate new subscriptions during the month, they will be added to the pool size on the first of the next month.

Example: Your bundle includes 2MB per subscription and you have 27 activated subscriptions. These 27 subscriptions will share 54MB of data. Once the pool exceeds 54MB in a month, overage charges apply.

Please see First Activations Q&A or Change of Offer Q&A below for more specific details and examples.

Additional Fees

In addition to pay-per-use or bundle pricing, users may incur additional fees:

Setup fees or one-time fees: An invoice may include a one-time charge for a service or product started during the last invoice period. Example: Configuration of a dedicated APN, or an activation fee.
Periodic fees: Recurring monthly charges for a service or a product are charged a month in advance. Example: MRC for the pay-per-use model or bundle MRC for the bundle model
Usage fees: Usage fees include traffic charges generated from the last invoice date until the current invoice date. Traffic fees are charged in arrears. If you have a bundle subscription, traffic fees will be split between the bundle charged upfront and potential overages charged in arrears.

Retrieving Invoices

A few days after the billing cycle is over (i.e., on the second or third working day of the month), invoices will be emailed to your billing contact from the email address billing@sierrawireless.com. Invoices can also be accessed at any time from your AirVantage account portal in the Account>Billings>Invoices section.

From the Latest Invoices widget in the Account>Billings>Invoices section, you can view your latest three invoices and the amounts billed on each, and download them as PDF files. Should you need to download multiple invoices at once, use the dedicated widget to select a specific period between three months ago and one year ago to download the invoices from that period.

For each month, beside the invoices, you can retrieve the reports that list different items that have been taken into account for the invoices of the same month.

If Autopay is not enabled to automatically pay the invoices, then the Pay button will be enabled. When you are ready to pay an invoice, select the Pay button to see a list of available Payment Methods . Select the appropriate payment method to pay the invoice.

Once the invoice is paid, the Pay button will change to Paid and will no longer be selectable.

If the invoice is paid via check or any other non-electronic payment method, then the Pay button will not be displayed.

You can use the Notifications widget to include additional recipients on the invoice emails sent after each billing cycle:

Invoice details

The invoice contains two sections:

The first section summarizes the costs per offer and any generic fees.
The second section details the charges for each offer, such as the monthly subscription fees based on the number of SIMs and the potential overages for the previous month.

Below is a sample invoice, with annotations to help you understand each cost line.

SIM and usage reports

For each month, beside the invoices, you can retrieve reports that list different items that have been taken into account for that month’s invoicing:

the list of orders, along with the Order ID, reference and quantity. We are also providing the Custom ID or External ID (that you can use to track the order ID in your own system) to ease your order checking
a data usage report that lists all the data usages that have been consumed during the month per SIM along with the offer and the pricing zone but also the labels and the company which you can use to dispatch the costs to different entities or your own customers.

Eager to see examples of use of the data usage report? Please check the How to use usage reports to dispatch the connectivity costs among customers or business units?

Payment Methods

The Payment Methods section of the account portal allows you to update your payment method and opt for an automated and secure online payment. Payment Methods is only available for accounts in countries where Sierra Wireless has an electronic payment agreement.

Supported payment methods include credit cards (VISA, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover) and the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), if applicable to your country. Click on the drop-down arrow to add a payment method.

You may select multiple payment methods but must designate one default method. The first payment method entered, automatically becomes the default. To set a different default payment method, select the Set as Default button. You will be prompted to confirm the default payment method, which will then be indicated by a star.

To delete a payment method, select the trash can icon to the right of the payment method. You cannot delete the default method. Another payment method must be selected as a default before the old default can be deleted.

If a saved credit card expires, add a new credit card and then set the new one as the default prior to deleting the expired one.

You can select Autopay to automatically pay each invoice as it becomes due using the default payment method. When selecting Autopay for the first time, you will be prompted to acknowledge the terms and conditions.

Billing Q & A

How are initial activations billed?

When you activate your first subscription of a bundle offer, the pool computed at the beginning of the month is empty. Thus, you won’t pay a complete monthly charge for the activation month, but you will be billed a pay-per-use fee that reflects the monthly consumption. You won’t be penalized for end-of-month activations.

At the beginning of the next month, the pool size is computed based on the number of active SIMs in the bundle. The SIMs activated during the previous month now automatically contribute to the pool.

If you activate additional SIMs within that month, their usage is considered in the data pool for the bundle. Usage above the calculated pool amount will incur overages.

When will I receive an invoice for my SIM orders?

SIMs are invoiced the month after the order ships.

How is test-ready mode billed?

For each SIM activated on a test-ready mode (TRM) offer, you are charged a TRM activation fee at the time the SIM switches from test-ready to active. The TRM activation fee is a one-time charge per SIM.

What happens to pricing with a change of offer?

When changing a SIM from offer A to offer B:

All usage while the SIM is part of offer A (i.e., before the change) will be billed based on offer A pricing.
All usage while the SIM is on offer B (i.e., after the change) will be billed based on offer B pricing.
At the beginning of the month after the change, the pool size (or monthly subscription for a pay-per-use offer) will be reevaluated based on the updated number of SIMs in each offer. In this example, bundle A contains one less SIM and bundle B contains one more.
At the time of the offer change, if there are no active SIMs on the new offer then no pool exists. This means that the SIM that was moved will be billed on a pay-per-use basis for that month.

What is a seasonal offer?

An offer is defined as seasonal if the contract mentions a specific MRC for suspended SIMs.

For each SIM suspended at the beginning of the billing cycle for a seasonal offer:

you will be charged a specific suspended MRC instead of the regular MRC.
suspended SIMs will not contribute to the pool size; the pool size in a seasonal offer is computed based only on the number of active subscriptions on the first day of the month.
the end of the engagement period for the suspended subscriptions will be postponed accordingly. The engagement period is the number of months for which you have paid the regular MRC for the subscription.