How can I lease my ext?

[Gerard42]

Hello all
I have a question. I am planning to buy 3cx , I don't know if there is an integrated platform to lease extensions to the third party and give them a quota for certain minutes?
What I am planning to do, I will purchase the 3cx and Sip trunk service,I will assign an ext for a customer who will request 500 minutes, once I got the payment I will add 500 minutes for his/her ext . Once they are done 500 minutes, they cant call. so is it doable?

 

[TBWD]

3cx is not setup for that kind of usage.

 

[VoIPTools]

As TBWD mentioned, this is not supported out-of-the-box, but it is absolutely possible to do this with some customization. But there are some pain-point areas that are not easily overcome. For example, there is only one company directory and only one default "on-hold" music. And extensions can call other extensions (unless you tinker). But it is absolutely possible to build a solution that assigns budgets to extensions and disables the ability to make / receive calls when the budget has been exhausted. You would need a web portal that the customer can log into to see their current balance, get a call report, charge up their account, etc. You will need a database that tracks call usage and subtract the cost of the calls from the available funds, and a service that monitors active calls and barges into the call to provide warnings as the budget nears empty and eventually terminates the call when the funds are gone. If it sounds like a lot of work, you are correct... but it can be done.

 

[Gerard42]

Thanks for the answer, Sounds like a lot of work, but users will call outbound. how can I keep track call usage? Is there a DB table to pull the data? @voiptoys Do you know if there a platform to achieve my goals?

 

[rfcomms]

Call usage is best dealt with by your SIP provider, who should be able to send a monthly csv of the calls, which you then send to a billing company to mark up and send out invoices.

Bread and butter to a phone company - if you are not, then 30 years of learning and you'll be there, like the rest of us.

 

[VoIPTools]

The CDR files are (optionally) created with each and every call, and lucky for you they have the call duration and even the calculated price. You can process those files yourself, or you can use our Exporter tool to do it for you, but that's only part of the task. You still have to automate the disabling of the extension based on budget. We have a REST based API for that if you want to program something yourself.

 

[cobaltit]

As many have said this typically it's something you do at the PBX level but more at the carrier/provider level. So if you want to go this route you'd be looking at setting up a trunk per customer/extension and limiting your minutes there.