Billing for Software and Services
Clients occasionally ask us to help them understand which of our professional services are billable and which are included as part of our regular setup and hosting fees. This document is meant to help clarify our policies and procedures for professional services charges to avoid any surprises on our invoices.
To download our Policy on Billing for Professional Services, follow this link.
Storage Calculations
License fees for Catalyst products are based in part on the number of gigabytes of data we maintain on your site. The data we measure includes the electronic documents we store, plus the volume of meta-data kept in the accompanying SQL database, and a surcharge to cover the volume of text stored in the full-text index engine.
Electronic Files: On the 25th of each month, we determine the volume of electronic files stored in folders on your the site. Typically, the folders contain original files you provided to us along with other files that may be created and conversions we create on your behalf. Converted files could include the following:
- PDF images created during processing or created while the site is in use.
- HTML preview files created during the indexing process to facilitate the HTML preview of native files.
- Outlook MSG files if you choose to store them on the site along with the HTML version of the email and its separate attachments.
- Redaction copies created on the site.
- Print jobs created on the site and not deleted.
- Production copies kept on the site and linked in CR.
For obvious reasons, the size of the combined files on your site will often be larger than the original volume of files. If, for example, you choose to store a native file along with an HTML preview of the native file, your storage volume will be larger than if you just included the native file itself. Likewise, if we explode an Outlook MSG file into its individual constituents (email message and attachments) and we keep the original MSG file on the site, your storage will likely double because we are storing the files twice in their different forms.
SQL and Full-Text Index: Along with the volume of documents stored on the site, we calculate the size of the SQL database used on your site. We take this calculation from the database itself.
We also add a 10% surcharge to reflect the estimated size of the full-text index that we maintain for searches. The 10% is based on the size of the files stored on the site plus the volume of SQL meta-data.
Because we use a grid-based system, there is no direct way to determine the actual size of the index for each site. We chose a figure of 10% because it is less than our estimate of the actual figure, which we believe ranges from 20% to 30% based on our testing.
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