Refers to the ability to set various methods of profit protection at the route plan level and/or vendor level either by percentage or by per minute profit. The per minute or percentage value can be set as a positive, neutral (0) or a negative.
Profit protection is applied on top of the margin already built into the customer rates you have sold.
Protection options:
Off - By default, protection is turned off.
Percentage - If you select percentage profit protection and set the protection amount to 20% for example, then all calls will check if the customer rate is 20% higher than the vendor rate in order to pass each call.
Profit Per Minute - If you select per minute profit protection and set the protection amount to 0.02 for example, then the calls will check that the customer rate is 0.02 cents higher than the vendor rate in order to pass each call.
Maximum Rate - Allows you to set a value for the maximum rate you are willing to charge across the route plan.
Ignore Vendor Profit Protection - Toggling this option will ignore any vendor level profit protection settings.
You can also add profit protection in each rule on a vendor by vendor basis. For example: You might set profit protection overall (route plan level) at 0 to ensure you don’t pass calls below cost and then inside each routing rule assign different profit protection values and options at the vendor level. (Vendor A @ 5%, Vendor B @ 15%, etc)
A negative percentage or a negative per minute value may be used if you are willing to lose margin but want to limit how much. In the same way, you can set your profit value to zero which means you can pass at cost but not below cost.
Keep in mind that the route plan profit protection must be higher than the subsequent vendor rule profit protection. (i.e. a route plan is set to 1%, vendors inside the rule must be set above 1%)