A PI may have multiple charge accounts, but it is preferred to limit the amount to one unless there is reason to group different projects.
Institutions may use charge accounts to group PI charge accounts together
(e.g. group all college of engineering PI charge accounts under college of engineering charge account)
Reference billing information.
Allocate credits and discounts.
Apply custom rates.
Set up automatically (must have a charge account to create a project).
If you have had a project with OSC, you most likely already have a charge account.
Budget
Set per project as a soft limit of total spending for that project.
When a budget becomes zero or negative, the project is restricted.
Running jobs will complete.
Pending jobs will not be scheduled.
Jobs cannot be submitted using a restricted project.
Storage continues to be charged, regardless of the project/budget status.
Updated once per day (overnight), based on completed jobs and storage quota from that day.
Credit
Attached to a charge account, and apply to all projects under that charge account.
Credit will be depleted for project charges for projects under the associated charge account up to the credit amount, during the billing period.
e.g. There is a credit of $5. Charges for a project where this credit can apply sum up to $2. The total charge is updated to $0, and then the credit is reduced to $3.
Credits are only updated once per month.
OSC runs billing periodically to generate statements to send to institutions. Once billing runs, then the credit is reduced appropriately.
To determine your credit remaining between billing periods, you need to calculate the utilization and storage quota price for all projects under that charge account.
Credit is not reflected in the budget. These are separate.
Current types:
Ohio academic: annual credit of $1,000 per PI
Discount
Two methods:
Attached to a charge account, and apply to all projects under that charge account.
Attached to a project type, and apply to all projects of that type.
OSC runs billing periodically to generate statements to send to institutions. The discount will be taken from the bill when it is run.
Discount is not reflected in the budget.
Current types which reduce costs by a percentage:
Classroom: 100% reduced cost
Campus Champion: 100% reduced cost
Billing
Jobs record a price when it is completed based on the rate at the time the job was submitted.
The recorded price does not reflect any credit or discount.
Storage is billed daily, based on quota.
Charge accounts have an associated billing period (monthly, quarterly, annually). By default, the billing period is monthly.
Jobs included in the billing will have completed during the selected timeframe.
OSC runs billing periodically to generate statements to send to institutions. The charge account billed is based on the hierarchy at the time billing is run. Credits and discounts will also be applied at this time.
