The sections below explain the various features of using Maxio Platform and Advanced Billing together.
Please be aware that this article is related to Maxio Platform's Advanced Billing platform. Together, Maxio Platform and Advanced Billing offer full-suite subscription management and financial operations for all SaaS business models. YYou can learn more about Advanced Billing by checking out the articles under this section of the help center.
Updating Customers and Payments
Customers and Payments can sync bi-directionally between Maxio Platform and Advanced Billing. This means that if you update a Customer or a Payment in one system, it will also update in the other.
Customers
Any updates made to Customers in Maxio Platform (like address, email, etc.) will be sent to Advanced Billing if the "Send Customer Updates" sync step is enabled. The Customer address information is automatically synced from Advanced Billing to the Maxio Platform Customer record in the Get Customers sync step.
By default, the Advanced Billing Shipping City, Shipping State/Province, and Shipping Country are automatically mapped to (respectively) the City, State/Province, and Country Analytic fields for the Maxio Platform Customer. In the event Customers override these default mappings with Custom Mappings, the default mappings are then stricken out and not used.
Payments
Choose one system where you receive payment because issues related to timing will happen if you process payments across multiple systems within the same timeframe. Verify that the associated invoice data is correct and matches among the various synced systems before posting a payment.
Accessing the Subscription List
Advanced Billing users have the ability to see all of their Subscriptions across all Customers. As with all List views, setting a combination of filters, columns, column order, and/or column sorting displays a custom Subscription list.
To access this list, from the side navigation bar, expand Customers and select Subscription List.
Viewing the Subscription Detail
You can click on a single Subscription to see a summary of the Subscription and related Transaction(s) details. From the Customer screen in Maxio Platform, click the Subscriptions tab. Also, from the Subscriptions tab, you can access Status, Next Billing Date, Transactions Count, and other Advanced Billing Subscription Data. Notice the active link under Transaction Count. This link gives you direct access to all the Transactions associated with the given Subscription.
Then click the Subscription number to open the Subscription details page.
Canceling Transactions
When you cancel a Subscription in Advanced Billing and then sync to Maxio Platform, the Transactions related to the canceled Subscription and were in "Recurring, Not Renewed" status are also canceled. The canceled Transaction status then becomes "Recurring, Canceled".
Should the Subscription be reactivated, the corresponding Transactions will also be updated and will no longer be marked as canceled.
Editing the Advanced Billing ID
The Advanced Billing ID is both editable and mappable. You can add/change this ID using the given field in the Customer record. You can also map the Advanced Billing ID through the Get Sales Order integration.
So, for example, you can now map the value from Salesforce and automatically match the Customer in Maxio Platform to the corresponding Advanced Billing Customer.
Current Limitations
Below is a list of limitations in the Advanced Billing integration. This list is not comprehensive; it is intended to highlight important limitations that apply to many users.
- For QuickBooks-synced accounts
- Unsupported: updating Payments that are synced from Maxio Platform to Advanced Billing
- Limited: voiding or deleting Payments that are synced from Maxio Platform to Advanced Billing
- For Xero-synced accounts
- Unsupported: receiving an overpayment of an Invoice
- Limited: deleting Payments that are synced from Maxio Platform to Advanced Billing
- A single Payment that applies to multiple Customers cannot be synced from Maxio Platform to Advanced Billing.
Voiding/Deleting Payments - Best Practice
You can only void/delete Payments if:
-
The Payment has not been already synced with Advanced Billing.
Once the Payment has been synced back to Advanced Billing, you may no longer void or delete it. -
The account is connected to a GL, like QuickBooks.
Although there is no way to update a Payment in Advanced Billing, you can void/delete Payments through QuickBooks.
For example, you create an Invoice with automatic payment in Advanced Billing and then you sync it to Maxio Platform. From Maxio Platform, you sync the Invoice/Payment to QuickBooks. At this point, you decide to void the payment in QuickBooks. After voiding the payment, you sync back to Maxio Platform. Open the voided Payment. A message appears at the top of the Payment screen stating that it was voided in QuickBooks and cannot be voided in Advanced Billing:
The Payment still exists in Maxio Platform, but the Amount is set to “0.00”, the Description displays “Voided”, and there are no Payment Lines.
And because there are no Payment Lines, the Payment will not be synced to Advanced Billing.
In this example scenario, the Payment was automatically paid. The Payment could also have been received in Maxio Platform or applied in QuickBooks. In either case, the Payment can be voided/deleted just as long as it has not already been synced back to Advanced Billing.
Unlike voided Payments, properly deleted Payments no longer exist in the system and no longer appear on the Payments tab in Maxio Platform.
Glossary of Terms
Here is a helpful table explaining the various terms used in Maxio Platform and in Advanced Billing as well as to which application each applies.
| Attribute | Definition | Application |
| Customer | For Maxio Platform, the customer represents both Maxio Platform customers and their end customers. Advanced Billing refers to Customers as the end customer of our customers (referred to as Merchants). Additionally, Customer on the Maxio Platform side requires company or organization level information; whereas the required field on Advanced Billing is first and last name. | Both |
| Invoice | An invoice is the aggregation of all charges, taxes, and discounts due for payment available externally | Both |
| Invoice Line Item | The itemized list of all items on an invoice which sum to the amount due less tax on the invoice | Both |
| Payment | A payment is used to reduce the amount a customer owes from a previously issued Invoice. These can be automatically collected based on the defined payment profile or applied manually based on check/cash/etc. received. | Both |
| Merchant | Merchant is internal Advanced Billing terminology for our direct customers (i.e. those with a subscription to Advanced Billing). The merchants would then sell subscriptions of products to their customers via their own Advanced Billing account. | Advanced Billing |
| Site | A site is a container for a merchant’s products, subscriptions, and customers. Each site has its own settings and configuration. In particular, each site defines its own subdomain, currency, and gateway settings. Any reporting that Advanced Billing performs is done at the Site level | Advanced Billing |
| Subscription | Subscriptions are central to Advanced Billing. They tie your customers to your products and are responsible for billing and charging on your recurring intervals. The subscription defines the set of services a customer is using today and those which will be invoiced upon the next invoice date. | Advanced Billing |
| Proforma Invoice | Proforma invoices allow both, you, the merchant, and the customer to be able to see upcoming expected billing amounts in the form of a proforma invoice. These are not payable invoices but instead a preview of what is expected to bill at the next renewal. | Advanced Billing |
| Prepayment | Prepayments are payments applied to a subscription that exceed any invoice due amounts. The prepayment amounts can then be applied to subsequent invoices. | Advanced Billing |
| Refund | Refunds can be processed via the system for certain gateways or recorded as external refunds when issued via cash, check, or other methods. In Advanced Billing, these refunds can be created in combination with a Credit Note (this would align with a Maxio Platform Refund Receipt) or standalone (not available in Maxio Platform). | Advanced Billing |
| Credit Note | A credit note is used to reduce the amount a customer owes and is categorized as five different subtypes: migration, component downgrade, void, refund, and general. | Advanced Billing |
| Service Credit | Service credits are a way to reduce the amount that a subscriber owes on an open invoice. They are created against a subscription and can be manually applied to invoices or will automatically be applied to the next invoice issued. Service credits are applied to invoices as credit notes, and credit notes reduce the invoice due amount, like a payment. | Advanced Billing |
| Product Catalog | Product catalog refers to the section of the Advanced Billing app that allows merchants to configure and maintain a full listing of all products, components, coupons, and offers, and related sign-up pages. | Advanced Billing |
| Product Family | Product families enable grouping for your products that can be considered different “feature levels” or “plans” of the same service or offering | Advanced Billing |
| Product | A product, referred to some as a plan, is defined primarily by a recurring amount charged at a set interval for a limited or open-ended period. Products may also include set-up fees and trials. | Advanced Billing |
| Price Point | Product price points allow you to charge customers different amounts and at different frequencies for the same product. You can define multiple price points per product, and select a default price point that will be used in cases where a price point isn’t specified. | Advanced Billing |
| Component | Components allow you to introduce additional “line items” to your products that are often expressed as “add-ons”, upsold features, or pay-per-use items. These are defined at the product family level and are therefore available to all products within the family. There are six different component types: Quantity Based (One-Time), Quantity Based (Recurring), On/Off, Metered Usage, Prepaid Usage, and Events Based Billing. | Advanced Billing |
| Coupon | Discounts to be applied to a customer subscription can be defined as either a set amount or percentage. Additional configurations such as restricting the applicable product/component, stackability, compounding strategy, and recurring options are available. | Advanced Billing |
| Offer | Offers combine the essential product catalog building blocks (Products, Components, Coupons) into packages that are easier to bring to market and can be thought of as bundles. | Advanced Billing |
| Grouped Subscription | Advanced Billing’s subscription groups allow merchants to group together individual subscriptions so that they can be billed on one consolidated invoice. These consolidated invoices will be issued on the primary group member's billing schedule. | Advanced Billing |
| WhoPays | WhoPays is a feature that allows payment responsibility to be assigned to another customer in the same hierarchy (i.e. an ancestor may be the payer, but another unrelated customer may not be the payer). As such, this feature can only be used in conjunction with Customer Hierarchy. | Advanced Billing |
| Contract | A contract is an agreement of what has been purchased and will be delivered over the term of the contract. These serve as containers for key records like transactions and invoices and are the object around which deferred revenue and unbilled AR calculations are performed in all finance reports. | Maxio Platform |
| Register | A Register is a container for Contracts, which in turn hold Transactions and Invoices. Once the Register is created, you can add Contracts, Transactions, and Invoices to it by adding records to new and existing Customers. | Maxio Platform |
| Transaction | Contract line items or the list of items agreed to in the contract used for revenue recognition | Maxio Platform |
| Item | An Item is a solution or product you license or sell. Each Transaction and Invoice Line Item must have an associated Item. When using a GL Connector, Items are typically created and managed in your GL and synced to Maxio Platform. | Maxio Platform |
| Credit Memo | A credit memorandum is used to reduce the amount a customer owes from a previously issued Invoice. In Maxio Platform, these are included in the Invoice List under the Type = Credit Memo. | Maxio Platform |
| Refund Receipts | A Refund Receipt is QuickBooks Online construct that records a refund to a customer for a previously paid balance on an Invoice. This action results in both a cash and a revenue-impacting transaction with no impact on the invoices due amount. | Maxio Platform |