Vulog Oddities

A reference for Vulog-specific billing logic, quirks, and configuration details that are important to understand but not always obvious from the system itself.

Billing

Configuration

Note

Vulog is making some changes to the pricing system that should allow us to change pricing directly without their help in the near future.

Price configuration is handled on a per-vehicle, per-service, and per-mobility plan basis. Because of this complexity, it's a good idea to involve Vulog early on, leaving appropriate time for extensive testing, before we plan for a pricing change to go live.

Rounding

Time

There is no fractional billing for per-minute rates. A fractional minute will always round up to the nearest full minute. For example, a trip that lasts for 11 minutes and 5 seconds will be billed as 12 minutes.

Hours and days are not subject to the same rounding function. Instead, the billing algorithm will charge members whichever combination of units gets them the lowest price. For example, a trip that lasts for 1 hour and 50 minutes will be billed as the cheaper of the following:

\[ \text{tripCost} = \min \left\{ \begin{array}{l} (1 \,\text{hour} \times \mathit{hourRate}) + (50 \,\text{minutes} \times \mathit{minuteRate}), \\ (2 \,\text{hours} \times \mathit{hourRate}) \end{array} \right. \]

Distance

For the purpose of over-mileage, Vulog's billing system rounds distance down to the nearest whole unit.

For example, a trip that drives 10.9 miles over the allowed mileage would be charged for 10 additional miles, not 10.9 or 11.

Likewise, over-mileage works based on full days. If a member pays for 3 days of driving, even if the trip took less than 3 days, they receive the allowed mileage for 3 days. If they only pay for 1 day and some hours, they only get 1 day's worth of distance included.

Taxes

Taxes are charged based on the tax zone configured over the area where the trip started. This applies to both free-floating and station-based services. The tax zone overrides the default service tax rate.

In the rare event that a trip starts outside of any tax zone (e.g., restarting a stuck trip outside the service area), it will be billed at the default service tax rate — which is currently set to the Saint Paul rate.

Tax zone rates cannot be changed directly in Back Office. The name of a tax zone is not linked to the rate it charges — open a ticket with Vulog to adjust rates. The geographic area covered by a tax zone can be adjusted without Vulog's help.

Warning

Don't change the tax zones without extreme caution and care. We're working on reconfiguring tax zones so that they accurately align with the geographic boundaries of the municipalities that may be levying these taxes.

Credits

Credits in a member's wallet are treated as any normal payment method. Subtracting any available, applicable credits from the invoice total is the last step before an invoice is sent to Stripe for payment processing.