Patent ID: 7787859

Claim:
A method, comprising: establishing accounting sessions between each respective accounting client of a plurality of accounting clients and allocating a common accounting session identifier to each of the accounting sessions based on a received request to establish an accounting session between an accounting server and at least one accounting client, wherein the accounting sessions are configured to generate costs to be charged against prepaid credit during a call after ascertaining whether any costs generated by the plurality of accounting clients in a network, which are associated with a request to establish the call between a first terminal and a second terminal, are to be charged against the prepaid credit; receiving, at the accounting server, charging update data from each of the plurality of accounting clients during the call, the charging update data including the accounting session identifier and tariff update data; and collating charging update data from each of the accounting clients in the accounting server based on the accounting session identifier and the received charging update data at the accounting server, to enable updating of the prepaid credit during the call.