Types of Components

Before you apply a component to a subscription, you must understand the five types of components that you can build within Advanced Billing. Please read-on to understand the complexities of components. Of course, if you have any questions, please reach out to our knowledgeable staff with any questions.

This article is related to managing the Components in your Advanced Billing account. 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. You can learn more about Coupons by checking out this help article: Components Overview.

Metered Components

Metered components are used to bill for any type of unit that resets to 0 at the end of the billing period (think daily Google Adwords clicks or monthly cell phone minutes). This is most commonly associated with usage-based billing and many other pricing schemes.

For metered components, you tell us every time one of your customers uses some unit or units of your “widgets”. At the end of the billing period, Advanced Billing will bill your customer for the total number of widgets used, and then we will reset the widget count to zero and the whole process starts over for the new billing period.

Note that this is different from recurring quantity-based components, which DO NOT reset to zero at the start of every billing period. If you want to bill for a quantity of something that does not change unless you change it, then you want quantity components, instead.

Some examples:

  • An email gateway provides 1000 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 that charges for hours of compute time at a certain cost per hour
  • Bill for daily Google Adwords clicks
  • Bill in arrears for monthly cell phone minutes
  • Bill for any type of Usage
  • Bill for overages

Quantity Based Components (Recurring)

Recurring quantity-based components are used to bill for the number of some unit (think 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, number of employees, etc.

Each “widget” that you’ve reported to us as being in use is assumed to remain in use by that customer until some future change. In other words, the quantity allocated does NOT reset to 0 at the end of the billing period. In contrast, metered-usage component usages DO reset to 0 at the end of the period.

Common Examples:

  • Bill for the number of user licenses

  • Bill for the number of (fill in the blank)

  • IP addresses:
    • Basic service offers 1 custom IP address for free
    • Extras can be purchased for $1 each
  • Extra projects:
    • Project management service allows users to purchase extra “projects” a la carte for $5/each/month.
  • Software seats that cost $100/each when you buy 1-5, $90/each when you buy 6-10, etc.

  • Charge flat fees based on a number of customers:
    • 0-50 customers = $0
    • 51-500 = $49
    • etc

Quantity Based Components (One-time)

One-time quantity-based components are used to create ad hoc usage charges that do not recur. For example, at the time of signup, you might want to charge your customer a one-time fee for onboarding or other services.

The allocated quantity for one-time quantity-based components immediately gets reset back to zero after the allocation is made.

Common Examples:

  • Your customer purchases an onboarding package at the time of signup

  • Bill for the number of (fill in the blank)

On/Off Components

On/off components are used for any flat fee, recurring add on (think $99/month for tech support or a flat add on shipping fee).

Common Examples

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

An on/off Component consists of 6 pieces of information:

  • Name: The name of the component. i.e. text messages
  • Description A description for the component that will be displayed to the user on the hosted signup page (if enabled below).
  • Price: The amount the customer will be charged per unit
  • User Access: Whether or not to allow a subscriber to update this component in the Billing Portal
  • Tax Settings Is the component subject to taxes?
  • Public Signup Settings Which Publice Signup Pages should this component be displayed on?

Once you have created an On/Off Component, it will appear under the Product Family on the Products tab. You can make changes to the component by clicking the ‘Edit’ link.

Prepaid Components

Prepaid components are only available on our new Relationship Invoicing architecture.


Prepaid components allow customers to pre-purchase units that can be used up over time on their subscription. In a sense, they are the mirror image of metered components; while metered components charge at the end of the period for the amount of units used, prepaid components are charged for at the time of purchase, and we subsequently keep track of the usage against the amount purchased.

Compared to other component types, prepaid components 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 their pre-purchased amount.
  • Prepaid allocations can be automatically re-allocated for the next period.
  • Leftover prepaid usage can be rolled over to the next billing period.
  • Prepaid allocations can also have expiration dates, in conjunction with the other rollover settings.
  • Proration schemes are not applicable.

For more information on these unique settings, please see our documentation section on prepaid components.

Below are some common use cases for this component type:

  • 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, and any additional messages are billed as overages.
Was this article helpful?
0 out of 0 found this helpful