|
What tariffs are used for? Tariffs (or in other words connection rates) are used to calculate an amount of money you spend when you are online. You no longer need to count your money by yourself or use your ISP's online counters, Dialer Queen will do all necessary work for you.
To create the connection rates you should go to the second tab in the connection properties window:
To create a new connection rate click the "Add new" button, to edit an already existing one click "Edit selected". If you want to remove some tariff from the list you can click the "Delete" button to do it. If you are too lazy to enter the same tariffs over and over for each connection you may appreciate the "Copy from..." button, which allows you to copy all connection rates and limits from another connection to the one you editing. IMPORTANT! All existing connection rates and connection limits will be replaced with the new ones from another connection.
The tariff's list contains all existing tariffs. By default, it displays all tariff's parameters, but you can choose to display only those of them that you really need as it shown on the picture above. You can do it by clicking the . The list below contains all parameters and their values of the selected tariff.
Please note that all changes you make inside this window will be saved only when you click the "Save" button!
Let's take a look on the picture again. Each tariff has the following parameters: name, days of week when this tariff should be used, daytime when this tariff should be used, phone numbers this tariff should be applied to and a cost per some period of time. On the picture above there are three tariffs, the first two are tariffs for week-days, while the last one is for week-ends. Week-days tariffs have different active periods: from 10:00:00 to 17:59:59 the first tariff will be used and from 18:00:00 to 22:59:59 the second will be used. Week-ends tariff has the active period of whole day: from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59. All three tariffs do not depend on phone numbers. This means that each tariff will be used with every phone number of this connection to count a money. The first tariff has a cost of $2.00 per hour. This means that every hour you are online costs you $2.00. Instead, the third tariff has a cost of $0.06 per minute. This means that every minute you are online costs you $0.06. Well, that was the basics. Let's see how these tariffs were created.
|
Click the "Add new" button to start the Tariff Wizard. Tariff Wizard was specially designed to help you easily create or modify connection rates.
| |
Step 1 - Name your connection rate. The name of a tariff should display it's purpose, for example, "Week-days (night time)" or "Week-ends" or "Traffic charge" and so on.
| |
Step 2 - Specify a cost of each period of time. For example, $2.00 per hour or $0.06 per minute. If your ISP charges you each second you can choose "second" from the dropdown list of periods. If your ISP has such tariff as: 5$ per night period or something like this, you can specify it by choosing "whole period" from the dropdown list. Whole period means the entire period of activity of this tariff.
|
Step 3 - Choose a tariffication rules. If your ISP uses tariffication by minute it means that all time you were online is rounded to the whole minutes when you disconnect. For example: 5 minutes and 27 seconds will be rounded up to 6 minutes, and the cost of 6 minutes will be charged from your account. Tariffication by seconds means that your ISP charges you each second.
|
Step 4 - Choose an active period of tariff. Each tariff have it's own active period - period when this tariff should be used. For example, from 10:00:00 to 17:59:59. If your tariff should be used the whole day, it's period of activity should be from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59.
|
Step 5 - Choose the days of the week this tariff should be applied to. The tariff may be set to be active every day, on weekdays, at weekends or even in a concrete day of the week.
|
Step 6 - Choose a dependencies of the tariff from phone numbers. If your ISP distinguishes what phone number you use to connect to Internet and charges you accordingly (i.e. differently) you may set tariff's dependence from the phone numbers this connection have. If you check one or more numbers in the list, this tariff will be applied to these phones only.
|
Step 7 - If your ISP charges you for the excess of some time limit, then you should specify this charge here. What is a time limit? It's better to show on a example: assume that your ISP setup a time limit of 5 hours per day. If you don't exceed this limit you pay $0.5 per hour, but if you spend online more than 5 hours per day your ISP charges you by $0.02 per each additional minute over this limit. If your ISP do so, specify this additional charge ($0.02 per minute in the example above) here.
|
Step 8 - If you chose on a previuos step that your ISP charges you for the excess of the time limit you should enter this time limit here. According to the above example, this would be 5 hours 0 minutes per day. Note: the limit you create here will be added to the limits page of the connection properties window. Click to learn more about limits.
|
Step 9 - If your ISP charges you for traffic, no matter incoming or outgoing, you should choose "Yes" and go to the next page of the Wizard, otherwise choose "No".
|
Step 10 - If you chose "Yes" on previous step, then you should specify cost for a traffic. Your ISP may charge you for the total amount of traffic or for the incoming and outgoing traffic separately, choose the appropriate option and enter the cost of each megabyte of traffic.
|
Step 11 - If your ISP charges you for the excess of some traffic limit, you should answer "Yes" and click "Next" otherwise choose "No". This charge is similar to the charge for the excess of time limit, except that it is for traffic.
|
Step 12 - If you answered "Yes" on previous page you will see this page. Specify here costs for the excess of traffic limit of each additional megabyte over the limit. You will be able to set up this limit on the next page.
|
Step 13 - This page allows you to set up the traffic limit for this tariff. For example, 100Mb per week. Note: since the traffic limit is a limit it will be added to the limits page of the connection properties window. Click to learn more about limits.
|
Step 14 - Specify round up rules. Traffic round up rule for means how your ISP rounds up an amount of traffic you used. For example, if your ISP rounds traffic up to the whole kilobytes it means that 10 Kbytes and 456 bytes will be rounded up to 11 Kbytes. "No round up" option means that traffic is counted by ISP to bytes.
|
Step 15 - Dialer Queen has got an ability to warn you when the active period of this tariff will be near to the ending. It is useful when, for example, one tariff have a charge of $0.5 per hour, second tariff have a charge of $0.7 per hour and the cost of the overall time you have spent online is calculated using the rate that was active when you disconnected. So that, if you were online during 1 hour using the first tariff ($0.5) then it ended and the second tariff ($0.7) starts (but you are still online), so when you disconnect an overall time you spent online will be charged using the second tariff, including the first hour! It is better to disconnect after the first hour and then reconnect again to avoid money overspending.
|
Step 16 - If you chose to react upon active period ending then you should specify the minimal value of the remainder of the active period. This means how many time should remain before the active period ends. For example, you may choose to be warned 5 minutes prior to the active period ending.
|
Step 17 - Dialer Queen is capable of performing some actions when the tariff's active period will be near to the ending. It may disconnect, play sound or show a warning message. Choose anything you want. Note, that disconnection can happen both after the remainder will be less then the value specified before and only after active period really ends.
|
Step 18 - If you chose to show a warning message on a prior page, then you can setup it here. Warning message is a special tablet appearing near the mouse cursor. You can adjust font, color and timings of the message according to your tastes.
|
Step 19 - Click "Finish" to add this tariff to the list.
|
Please note, that it is not necessary to fill up all pages in this Wizard. You should choose only those ones that fit best your needs. You can take a look at to familiarize yourself with a vast capabilites of a tariff system.
|
