Choose a Product Type

Choose the right Product type before you attach it to a Subscription. Advanced Billing offers six Product types, each suited to a different billing pattern.

Quantity based (recurring)

Recurring quantity-based Products are used to bill for the number of some unit, such as monthly software user licenses or the number of pairs of socks in a box-a-month club. This is most commonly associated with billing for user licenses, number of users, or number of employees.

Each unit reported as in use is assumed to remain in use by that customer until a future change. The allocated quantity does not reset to zero at the end of the billing period. This is the opposite of Metered Products, whose usage does reset to zero at the end of the period.

Examples:

• Bill for the number of user licenses.
• IP addresses: a basic service offers one custom IP address for free, and extras can be purchased for $1 each.
• Extra projects: a project management service allows users to purchase extra projects a la carte for $5 each per month.
• Software seats that cost $100 each for 1-5, $90 each for 6-10, and so on.
• Flat fees based on a number of customers, such as $0 for 0-50 customers and $49 for 51-500.

On/off

On/Off Products are used for any flat fee, recurring add-on, such as $99 a month for tech support or a flat add-on shipping fee.

Examples:

• Adding $5 a month for shipping.
• Adding $100 a month for tech support.
• A web app offers an SSL connection upgrade at $5 a month.

An On/Off Product consists of these fields:

• Name: the name of the Product, for example "Text Messages".
• Description: a description of the Product, displayed to the customer on the hosted signup page if enabled.
• Price: the amount the customer is charged per unit.
• User Access: whether to allow a subscriber to update this Product in the Billing Portal.
• Tax Settings: whether the Product is subject to taxes.
• Public Signup Settings: which Public Signup Pages should display this Product.

Once created, an On/Off Product appears on the Products tab within its Product Family. See Understanding Product Settings for the full field reference.

Quantity based (one-time)

One-time quantity-based Products are used to create ad hoc usage charges that don't recur. Example: Your customer purchases an onboarding package at the time of signup.

The allocated quantity for a one-time quantity-based Product resets to zero immediately after the allocation is made.

Metered

Metered Products are used to bill for any type of unit that resets to zero at the start of each billing period, such as daily ad-click volume or monthly cell phone minutes. This is most commonly associated with usage-based billing.

You report every unit of usage as your customer consumes it. At the end of the billing period, Advanced Billing bills your customer for the total units used, then resets the count to zero for the new billing period.

This is different from Quantity Based (Recurring) Products, which do not reset to zero at the end of every billing period. If you want to bill for a quantity that stays the same until you change it, use a Quantity Based Product instead.

Examples:

• An email gateway provides 1,000 credits per period, but allows you to send over your credit limit at a cost of $0.10 per email per period.
• A hosting company charges for hours of compute time at a certain cost per hour.
• Bill for daily ad-click volume.
• Bill in arrears for monthly cell phone minutes.
• Bill for overages.

Prepaid usage

Prepaid Usage Products are only available if your site uses Relationship Invoicing. See Understand How Invoices are Generated for more on this invoicing model.

Prepaid Usage Products allow customers to pre-purchase units that get used up over time on their Subscription. They're the mirror image of Metered Products: where a Metered Product charges at the end of the period for the units used, a Prepaid Usage Product charges at the time of purchase, and Advanced Billing tracks usage against the amount purchased.

Compared to other Product types, Prepaid Usage Products also have a number of unique characteristics:

• Overage pricing can be specified at a different rate than the normal pricing, to charge for units used past the pre-purchased amount.
• Allocations can be automatically re-allocated for the next period.
• Leftover usage can roll over to the next billing period.
• Allocations can also have expiration dates, in conjunction with the other rollover settings.
• Proration schemes don't apply.

See Set Up and Manage Prepaid Products for these settings.

Examples:

• A plan offering includes 10,000 free email validations for the first year.
• A package of 1,000 SMS messages can be purchased each month, with additional messages billed as overages.

Event based

Event Based Products stream real-time events to Maxio, track usage throughout the billing period, and charge based on reported events. The count resets to zero at the start of each billing period.

Event Based Products are only available if your site has event-based billing enabled.

Example: Your customer sends 10,000 SMS messages across multiple countries and is billed by number of messages sent, destination country, and phone carrier.

Related information

See Understand Products for how Products fit into the Catalog overall.