The Rate Plans are entirely similar to those that phone companies use to decide what rates to charge the customer when he makes a phone call. Softvision Explorer uses them to determine the rate the customer will be charged when he accesses a workstation.
You can define different rates to charge your customers. For example, you can set one rate for students and another one for loyal customers, etc. The rate plan is associated to the customer in his personal user record.
It is important not to confuse Rates with Rate Plans. The Rates are hourly connection costs while Rate Plans are used to determine the rate to use based on the customer, the time and the day of the week.

The rate plan can also be constant or variable based on the time or the day of the week.

Constant Plans
In this case, the program always applies the same rate independently of the time or the day of the week of the customer's access.

Variable Plans
When using variable plans, the client's rate depends on the particular moment of access. For each day of the week, you will have to specify whether the same rate is used for the whole day or if it will change based on time bands. In the latter case, you will also have to indicate the rate to apply outside the specified time bands. In this case, it is not necessary to specify rates for the entire day. For example, we can set two rates for the band 8:00-12:00 and 12:00-18:00, indicating another rate to apply for all times not included in the preceding time bands.