---
title: Call Accounting Concepts
excerpt: "How Expert Statistics counts calls precisely: abandoned versus declined, calls versus solicitations, transfer and internal categorisation, wait time, and multi-queue consolidation."
order: 4
---

## Understanding Call Accounting Concepts

Expert Statistics is precise about how it counts calls, and that precision sometimes surprises users who are used to a simpler count. The following concepts explain the differences.

### Abandoned versus declined calls

Expert Statistics distinguishes an abandoned call from a declined call. Abandonment is initiated by the caller: the person hangs up while waiting. A declined call is rejected by a PBX resource. An agent who lets the phone ring until the timeout expires, or who explicitly refuses the call, produces a declined call. A queue that sends a call to an overflow queue or a deterrent destination because no agent is available has also declined it.

### Calls versus solicitations

A single call can generate several solicitations. If a queue offers a call to an agent for twenty seconds and there is no answer, it offers the call again, to another agent or the same one. There is still only one call, but there are now two solicitations. This is why queue statistics can show more solicitations than calls, and it is a useful signal about how much routing effort a call required.

### How transferred and internal calls are categorised

Call categorisation (inbound, outbound, or internal) is based on the first segment of the call. A call answered by one agent and then transferred to a second agent remains an inbound call, because it began as inbound. An internal call is one initiated by a PBX resource to another PBX resource. A transfer is a special case of an inbound call that is ultimately redirected to a destination outside the PBX; Expert Statistics treats it as the inbound call it started as.

### Why wait time can look long

If a queue plays a pre-answer message, its duration is, by default, included in the queue wait time. Configuring the pre-answer duration for the queue removes that message time from the reported wait and splits abandonment into total abandoned and abandoned-during-pre-answer, giving a truer picture of how long callers actually wait for an agent.

### Multi-queue consolidation

As described in the consolidation section of [Core Features](/en/docs/expert-statistics/core-features), whether a call that crosses several queues is counted once or once-per-queue is a deliberate choice. The default per-queue count is best for analysing an individual queue; the consolidated count is best for reporting the true number of demands a group of queues handled.