Eventual items: consumable and not consumable

[ronflima]

Abstract

Some times eventual items are sold to customers in two categories:

• Non-Consumable: Those are items bought one-time. For instance, in a marketing system a customer can buy a web site or a logo, which is attached to its account as a one-time payment and an item to hold during the customer life cycle within the system. Non-consumable items are, normally, an item sold on a sales cart as a one time sale. There are, however, two kinds of non-consumables:

  • one-time items, which are sold only one time and are permanently added to the customer's account. For instance, in on-line games there are some weapons that you buy only once and they are added permanently to your account.
  • several-time items, which are sold and delivered to the customer, not being permanently added to the customer's account. For instance, a common product on an e-commerce follow this pattern.

• Consumable: Items bought several times with a life span that depend on usage. For instance, a customer can buy a number of social posts. After social posts are done, this customer need to buy more in order to keep posting on his social account. A consumable is like a pre-paid service which is consumed a number of times.

Requirements

1. Add the ability to manage consumable and non-consumable items for a given subscription, in order to compose the customer's bill.

2. Manage the life span of a consumable item, taking care of its consumption based on time or usage.