Billing

Billing in CityScreen Context is a record of what delivery earned, written as delivery is confirmed.

Invoices are raised and settled between the organization, its demand partners and the platform operator by whatever means those parties already use, and the platform is told about it afterwards.

What the platform does own is the arithmetic: how much a confirmed ad play was worth, how much of it is the platform’s commission, and how much each side has run up since the last time somebody paid.

Who this section is for

Two audiences, and they see different things.

Platform administrators configure commission, see any organization’s figures, and record payments made by an organization to the platform.

Organization employees see their own organization’s figures only. Employees in the owner and admin roles can additionally record payments — money received from a demand partner, or money received from the platform. An employee whose account is narrowed to a single legal entity does not see the organization-level balance at all; the Balance tab is not offered to them.

See Employees and roles for the roles themselves.

Financial transactions

A financial transaction is one record of money arising from delivery.

It is written at the moment delivery is confirmed — for real-time bidding, when the ad play comes back from the content management system and the ad request is marked successful. Every record carries the account it belongs to, the amount, whether it is a credit or a debit, the time, and — where it arose from delivery — a reference back to the ad play that caused it. Records are written in pairs: the same event produces one credit and one matching debit, so both sides of the movement are visible.

The record is append-only. No part of the product edits a financial transaction after it is written, and no part of it deletes one. This matters for two reasons a reader will run into:

A correction is a new record. Recording a payment adds a further pair of records with negative amounts, which is how a debt comes back down. The original charge stays where it is.
Closing a billing period produces a document and leaves the records it was built from as they are.

Not every sale produces financial transactions. Which sales models do and which do not is the subject of What gets billed.

Accounts and what a balance means

Each organization has three accounts, plus one account for every demand partner it sells to. They are shown together on the Balance tab of the client cabinet.

Figure	What it means
The organization’s own balance	Delivery revenue that has been earned and not yet been paid over. Every confirmed ad play sold through real-time bidding raises it by the winning bid. Recording a payment from a demand partner lowers it again.
Owed to the platform	Commission accumulated on this organization’s delivery and not yet paid to the platform operator. Every confirmed ad play raises it by the commission on that play. Flat-rate deliveries raise it by the flat price.
Owed by the platform	Used when an organization’s inventory is sold through the platform operator’s own demand relationships rather than the organization’s. In that arrangement the platform collects from the buyer and owes the organization its share, and this figure is that share, less commission, still outstanding.
Per demand partner	What that one partner owes for delivery it has won and not yet paid for. The organization’s own balance is the whole of this list rolled up.

Figure

What it means

The organization’s own balance

Delivery revenue that has been earned and not yet been paid over. Every confirmed ad play sold through real-time bidding raises it by the winning bid. Recording a payment from a demand partner lowers it again.

Owed to the platform

Commission accumulated on this organization’s delivery and not yet paid to the platform operator. Every confirmed ad play raises it by the commission on that play. Flat-rate deliveries raise it by the flat price.

Owed by the platform

Used when an organization’s inventory is sold through the platform operator’s own demand relationships rather than the organization’s. In that arrangement the platform collects from the buyer and owes the organization its share, and this figure is that share, less commission, still outstanding.

Per demand partner

What that one partner owes for delivery it has won and not yet paid for. The organization’s own balance is the whole of this list rolled up.

A balance is therefore an outstanding amount. It goes up as delivery is confirmed and comes down when somebody records a payment.

A balance is a record

Bidding, booking of automated guaranteed campaigns, flat-rate pricing and commission work the same whether an organization’s balance is large, zero or negative. Collecting what is owed is a matter between the parties.

Recording a payment

When money actually changes hands, someone records it so the outstanding figures come down. Three kinds exist, each with its own audience:

Payment	Who records it	Effect
From a demand partner	Platform administrator, or an employee in the owner or admin role	Lowers that partner’s outstanding amount and the organization’s own balance.
From the organization to the platform	Platform administrator only	Lowers the amount the organization owes the platform.
From the platform to the organization	An employee in the owner or admin role	Lowers the amount the platform owes the organization.

Payment

Who records it

Effect

From a demand partner

Platform administrator, or an employee in the owner or admin role

Lowers that partner’s outstanding amount and the organization’s own balance.

From the organization to the platform

Platform administrator only

Lowers the amount the organization owes the platform.

From the platform to the organization

An employee in the owner or admin role

Lowers the amount the platform owes the organization.

Every one of the three asks the person recording it to re-enter their own account password, which is checked on the server before the record is written. A payment recorded in error is corrected the same way anything else is: by recording the opposite movement.

Each payment record carries a free-text comment for a reference number or an explanation.

When the request to record a payment comes by phone or email, confirm who is asking before you record it.

In this section

What gets billed: The two accounting models this product uses, and where each sales model’s money is visible.
Fees and commission: How the platform’s cut is set, in what order the settings are consulted, and how it is taken out of a winning bid.
The billing period: The monthly settlement documents, and how long they are kept.

RTB price lists — prices are set on each sales model’s price list before delivery; billing takes over afterwards
Reporting — what counts as a confirmed ad play in the first place
Deployment model — one instance, one market, one currency; all amounts on these pages are in it