Our Products & Services
Getting Started
First Time Setup
Getting Started With Jobs
Getting Started with Ticketing
Setting Sonar up for Billing
Getting Started with Accounts
Getting Started with Inventory
Baseline Configuration
User Specific Resources
How To: Using Sonar's Customer Portal
Accounts
Account Types: Overview & Example Use Cases
Account Statuses: Overview & Example Use Cases
Account Management View: Overview
Scheduled Events: Overview & Use Cases
Notes & Tasks: Best Practices & Use Cases
Child Accounts: Best Practices & How Tos
Disconnecting an Account
Understanding the Affordable Connectivity Program
FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) Filings: How Sonar Can Help
Account List View: Overview
Specify Account ID upon Creation
Lead Intake Form Processing
Account Groups: Overview & Example Use Cases
CPUC Fixed Broadband Deployment by Address
Serviceable Addresses: Overview and Usage
FCC Data Exports: General Overview and Usage
Creating a New Account
Billing
Setting up Bank Account & Credit Card Processors
Billing Settings
Billing Defaults
Taxes Setup
General Ledger Codes: Overview
Services: Overview
Building a Data Service
Building Packages
Delinquency Billing Best Practices
Accounts in Vacation Mode
Batch Payments & Deposit Slips: Overview
Creating Discounts for Services and Packages
Setting Up Payment Methods and Taking Payments
Canadian ACH tool
Printed Invoice Batches: Overview
Delinquency Exclusions: Overview and Use Cases
Multi-Month Billing & Multi-Month Services
How to Take Bank Account Payments
Email Invoice Batch: Overview
Manual Transactions
ACH Batching: Overview
Billing Calculator
General Transactions: Best Practices
Usage Based Billing Policies: Overview and Usage
How to: Adding a Service to an Account
Usage Based Billing Policy Free Periods: Overview and Usage
Using Tax Exemptions - How To
Avalara: Overview & Setup
Print to Mail
Communication
Setting up an Outbound Email Domain
Triggered Messages: Setup
Call Logs: General Best Practices
Using the Mass Message Tool
Saved Messages: Overview
Message Categories: Overview & Use Cases
Phone Number Types: Overview and Use Cases
Email Variables & Conditions
Communication Tools: Overview
Trigger Explanations
Companies
How to: Setting Up a Company in Sonar
Managing Multiple Companies in Sonar: Best Practices
Rebranding your Sonar Instance
Financial
Contract Templates
Invoice Attachment Use Cases & PDF Examples
Invoice Messages: Overview & Use Cases
Invoices in Sonar: Examples, Creation & Contents
Integrations
Calix Integration: Overview
GPS Tracking Providers: Overview
Webhooks in Sonar: Basic PHP Example
How to Connect Cambium to your Sonar Instance
iCalendar Integration
RemoteWinBox - Integration with Sonar
External Marketing Providers
The Sonar Field Tech App
How to Connect Preseem to your Sonar System
Tower Coverage Integration: Overview
GoCardless Integration: Overview & Setup
Vetro FiberMap Integration: Overview
How to: Using Webhooks in Sonar
CrowdFiber Integration
Inventory
Setup of Inventory: Manufacturers, Categories, and Assignees
Inventory List View: Overview
Inventory Model Management: General Overview
Tracking and Using Consumable Inventory
Jobs
Job Types: Best Practices
Setting Up Schedules General Overview
Applying Task Templates to Jobs
Scheduling Week View: Overview
Example Jobs & Templates
Scheduling How-to: Creating and Booking a Job
Geofences: Overview
Edit Job Options
Jobs and Scheduling: Overview
Mapping
Misc.
Monitoring
Building a Monitoring Template
Pollers: General Overview, Deployment Strategy, Build Out & Setup
Building Alerting Rotations
Poller Troubleshooting
Networking
IP Assignments & Sonar
MikroTik: Setting Up a Sonar Controlled DHCP Server
IPAM: Basic Setup
MikroTik as an Inline Device: Integration With Sonar
MikroTik: Controlling Speeds
MikroTik: Controlling Access
PacketLogic: Integration With Sonar
Setting Up CoA Proxy
RADIUS: Building Reply Attributes
Data Usage Available Methods
Pulse, Polling, and PHP
Using Multiple Network Devices in Sonar
IPAM: Overview
Cable Modem Provisioning
LTE Integration
Assigning RADIUS Addresses
Controlling Customer Speeds with Sonar: General Overview
Sonar Flow
RADIUS: Build-Out & Integration with Sonar
Network Dashboard: Overview
Being Cloud Native
Netflow Integration: Overview
Building a Device Mapper
Sonar IP Addressing
Automating IP Assignments, Data Rates, and Network Access in Sonar
DHCP Delivery
Assigning an IP Address Using Sonar's IPAM: How to
Network Sites: Management View Overview
Building RADIUS Groups
Building Address Lists
Finding your OIDs
Purchase Orders
Release Notes
Reporting
Understanding Sonar Reports
How To Enhance Your Reporting With Custom Field Data
Report Licenses
Enhanced Business Intelligence - Tips & Tricks for Advanced Users
Sonar's Business Intelligence: Overview
Security
User Role Creation & Best Practices
Removing a Terminated Employee In Sonar
Password Policy In Depth
Application Firewall: General Overview and Best Practices
Users: Overview
Role Creation using GraphiQL
Sonar Billing
sonarPay
System
How to Best Use Global Search
How Your Data is Backed Up
How To Use GraphiQL to Understand the Sonar API
Frequently Used Terms
Sonar's Rich Text Editor
Mutations in the Sonar API
Notification Preferences
API Calls Using Third Party Applications: Personal Access Tokens
Date/Time Picker: Overview
Auth0: Overview
The New Sonar API
Introducing the New Sidebar
Upgrading your Ubuntu OS - Customer Portal Upgrades
A Deeper Dive into the New Sonar API
Consuming the Sonar API
Filtering: Simple vs Advanced
Browser Compatibility and Minimum Hardware Requirements for Sonar
REST API Wrappers for V1 Compatibility
User Profile: Your Personal User Settings
SMS Notifications
Dynamic Time Zones in Sonar
System Settings: Overview
Troubleshooting the Customer Portal
Controlling Your Landing Page: Personal Preferences
Interacting with Files via the API
Getting Your Data into Sonar
Customizing Your Customer Portal
Ticketing
Ticketing: Overview
Canned Replies Examples & Templates
Canned Reply Categories
Inbound Mailboxes Example Build
Ticket Categories Best Practices & Example Build
Exploring Ticket Groups
Using Parent Tickets
How to Integrate Inbound Mailboxes with Slack
Advanced Ticketing Features
Voice
Working With the Sonar Team & Additional Resources
Sonar's Security Practices & Certifications
Sonar and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Technical Security Overview
CyberSecure Canada Certification
Sonar's Security Strategies
Best Practices for Fast Tracking a Support Request
How Sonar Bills Your Instance
The Sonar Status Page
The Sonar Community Forum
Feedback Portal / Suggest a Feature
Sonar Casts Table of Contents
How to Request Termination of your Sonar Instance
Submitting Bugs vs. Feature Requests
Third Party Customer Support Referrals
Client Services Training Overview
Learning with Sonar: Tools and Resources
Table of Contents
- All Categories
- Billing
- Accounts in Vacation Mode
Accounts in Vacation Mode
Updated
by Mitchell Paul-Soumis
Read Time: 5 mins
Part of using Sonar to manage accounts, services, and statuses is the ability to modify accounts on the fly or on a scheduled basis. Account Statuses are especially useful as something that can be used for account management since changing the account status can be configured to change the services, the network speed, and how the account label shows up in a list. One example of how you can apply this flexibility is through the use of a "Vacation" status.
What is Vacation Status?
Vacation Status is a custom status you can create in your instance that provides your customers the option of opting for a less expensive, less demanding service while they are away from home. The advantage for the customer is that while they aren't at home able to use their service, they pay a small monthly fee to avoid disconnecting everything and having to reinstall later.
For your business, the vacation status is useful because it's entirely remote. As no technician dispatch is required for either the uninstall or the reinstall, you're saving time and money. Additionally, by using IP Address Management or RADIUS Groups to lower the customer's speed and change their service, you avoid any potential congestion issues as a result of unused connections on your network.
A vacation status can also be used as an inactive status to maintain an account listing in your instance while not providing service to the customer location. Done in this way, vacation status can be considered a temporary disconnection with a scheduled reactivation time.
Creating a Vacation Status
In order to create a functioning vacation status in your instance, the Account Status needs to be created, a service to associate with vacation mode needs to be created. Optionally, an address list - or RADIUS group depending on your network configuration - to filter this account and service into a distinct group on which you can manage their speeds.
Creating the Account Status
The first step in creating the Vacation status is to create the Account Status. You can follow the steps below to create this new status:
- Click on Settings
- Expand the Accounts segment
- Click on Account Statuses
- Click the "Create Account Status" button, located in the upper-right corner

For the purposes of a vacation status, you could use something like the following values:

- Activates Account must be checked if you plan to provide a small data service to the customer premises, and unchecked if it will be a placeholder status only
- The Name should be indicative of the use case, such as "Short-term Vacation"
- The icon and color can be variable, aligning them with whatever internal process you've established.
Once you've filled in the information for your account status, you can proceed to the next step, which is creating a Vacation Service.
Creating a Vacation Service
Creating the vacation service is where the important decisions are made regarding what service you'll be delivering to the customer premise, and at what speeds. Additionally, service creation establishes the price you'll be charging the customer to maintain their service.
The reason Sonar recommends continuing to deliver data service to these customers is to ensure that any IoT devices continue to function - from home heating to IP security cameras.
For instructions on creating a service in general, review the Building a Data Service article. The speed of the data service can be variable, however, we recommend a symmetrical 1 megabit connection. Finally, establishing a Usage-Based Billing service will ensure that the customer in question doesn't have any passive high-bandwidth devices by limiting the amount of data the home can consume during this vacation period.
Automating the Status Change
Optionally, the change from an active account status and normal service level can be automated through the use of Scheduled Events and Address Lists.
Using a Scheduled Event
If you do not remove the existing data service prior to adding a new data service, the scheduled event will fail.
In Sonar, Scheduled Events can be applied to accounts to set a date on which some action will occur. In the case of a customer going on vacation the process flow for automating the status change - and consequently the service change - should be as follows:
- Customer notifies you or your support staff of upcoming vacation/time away from home.
- A scheduled event is set to change the Account Status and the Account Service. This scheduled event is set for the day desired by the customer.
- Set another scheduled event for when they come back if they know the start and end dates of the vacation.
For more information on Scheduled Events, take a look at our scheduled event article here.
Using Address Lists or RADIUS Groups
Address Lists or RADIUS Groups are complementary to the scheduled events for automating status changes that affect service and speed, allowing an account service to be assigned to a list. This list will communicate back to your inline device and automatically reduce the speeds being delivered to the customer account. Configuring an Address List for your vacation service automates the process of changing the speeds, while the scheduled events automate the process of switching the services.
For more information on using Address Lists, take a look at the Building Address Lists article, while further details regarding setting up scheduled events can be found in the Scheduled Events: Overview and Use Cases article