Free checklist · for CRM teams and CFOs
The messaging-bill checklist.
The aggregator invoice arrives every month and gets paid every month — and reading it is usually nobody’s job. The five checks below are what I look at first in a cost-side CRM audit. Each takes an hour or two, and the first one most often pays for all the rest.
01
Promo rates on transactional traffic.
Booking confirmations, order statuses, missed-call notices — transactional messages, billed at a rate several times cheaper on the aggregator’s own price list. But the cheaper rate doesn’t switch on by itself: templates must be submitted for transactional approval. Skip that, and the whole traffic runs at promo price.
How to checkTake one monthly act and split the traffic: how many messages are service-by-content but billed as promo. That gap is usually the biggest single line of recovery — and approval costs the vendor nothing.
02
SMS segments: non-Latin scripts cost triple.
SMS bills per segment, not per message. Latin script fits 160 characters per message; Cyrillic and most non-Latin scripts fit 70 — 67 per segment in longer messages. A 200-character message is three segments, three times the price, and nobody sees it because the platform shows one row.
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Counts locally in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
How to checkTrim fallback texts to one segment — or cut everything that doesn’t change what the recipient does. Segments go uncounted until someone counts them.
03
Templates that silently never deliver.
A template can sit in the invoice for months with zero delivered messages — the platform shows “sent”, billing shows the amount, and only the join of the two reports shows the truth. It’s not always about the money: it’s hundreds of messages a month your customers simply don’t receive.
How to checkQuarterly, join the delivery report to the billing report per template. A template with cost > 0 and delivery = 0% is the first find worth hunting.
04
Uncapped penalty clauses.
New addendums like to define “violation” per message, uncapped, retroactive. At tens of thousands of sends, one mis-tagged campaign can out-cost a year of the service itself.
How to checkFour red-lines that cost the vendor nothing: violation per campaign, not per message · a cure period · a liability cap · effective from signature. Ask before signing — after, there’s only litigation.
05
SMS fallback on promo sends.
Fallback is a paid second channel for the same message. Justified for service notices — a person must learn about their booking. For promo it’s double price for traffic that was optional to begin with.
How to checkCheck where fallback is enabled in your send settings. Turning it off for promo is one checkbox that trims a visible share of the bill with zero harm to the program.
ⓘ This is the general billing mechanics of messaging aggregators, not a retelling of anyone’s contract. Your rates, volumes and clauses live in your agreement — the checklist tells you where to look.
Questions that come up along the way
What's the difference between transactional and promotional rates?
How many characters fit in one SMS segment?
How do I find templates that never deliver?
What should I check in an aggregator's contract addendum?
Do promotional sends need an SMS fallback?
Want this audit done for you — together with the revenue side?
Cost-side ops is part of the Diagnostic: two weeks, fixed scope, every number carries how it was measured. One finding like check 01 typically pays for it several times over.