Our Advanced Billing platform provides enhanced functionality to support your evolving monetization strategy with a flexible billing engine built for your B2B needs. Advanced Billing facilitates several ways to monetize products and services, including many upfront and usage-based pricing models.
Sites
When getting started with Advanced Billing, creating the first Site will be a top priority. To do this go into the "Sites" tab of the main menu and select the green "+create" button.
Sites function as organizational containers for your Products, Customers, and Subscriptions. While a single Site suffices, most Merchants find it beneficial to have at least two Sites – one for testing and one for production.
Easily create new Sites with customizable settings like Subdomain, Currency, Test Mode, and more. Switch between Sites and clear data when needed. To learn more about sites look at our documentation on the subject here.
Catalog
To start creating subscriptions, the products within your site's catalog will need to be created and configured first. The term 'Products' is used to encompass a broader range, offering flexibility and simplicity. Products are grouped into product families, allowing easy upgrades or downgrades within the same family. First, setup a product family by using the green "+ Create" button on the Catalog > Products tab.
After setting up a product family, you can create individual products within it. Just press the "+ Create New Product" within the product family.
From here, specify attributes like Name, Description, Accounting Code, pricing, intervals, and more. From there, the components, coupons, and other product families can be set up to more directly reflect any pricing scenarios. To learn more check out the documentation on products, components, coupons, or product families.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions play a pivotal role in Advanced Billing, connecting customers to products and handling recurring billing cycles seamlessly. A subscription can be created in various ways, but is primarily created through either the Advanced Billing interface or through Public Signup Pages. Once a subscription is established, it automatically renews based on the product's designated interval. Subscriptions will run by themselves, but monitor and identify any subscriptions that may need attention. If automated Dunning is active, staying updated becomes even more effortless. For more information on subscriptions, check out our documentation on them here.
Invoices
In Advanced Billing, invoices serve as crucial financial documents representing various billing events such as subscription signups, renewals, prorated upgrades, and ad-hoc charges. Invoices can have statuses like Draft, Pending, Open, Processing, Paid, Voided, or Canceled, each reflecting different stages. They can be collected through Automatic (auto-payment), Remittance (customer-initiated), or Prepaid (initial payment) methods and are automatically generated for various events. Manual creation is possible as well. To view and search invoices, go to the Billing > Invoices tab.
Invoices have issue and due dates. The issue date marks availability for payment, while the due date indicates the payment deadline. Dunning does apply to overdue invoices. Understanding these aspects of Advanced Billing invoices ensures effective management of your billing processes. To learn more about invoices go to our documentation on the subject.
Key Terminology
The key to learning any system is understanding what objects are called, how they work, and how they relate to one another.
| Object | Definition |
| Advanced Billing | The billing system used for managing subscriptions, products, and customers. |
| Catalog | The collection of products available for sale within a Site. Products can be organized into families, allowing easy upgrades or downgrades within the same family. |
| Dunning | The process of handling overdue payments and ensuring collection. |
| Invoices | Crucial financial documents representing billing events like signups, renewals, upgrades, and charges. They have statuses like Draft, Pending, Open, Processing, Paid, Voided, or Canceled. Invoices can be collected through Automatic, Remittance, or Prepaid methods. |
| Products | Items offered for sale. They include details like Name, Description, Pricing, Intervals, and more. |
| Sites | Organizational containers for Products, Customers, and Subscriptions. Typically, merchants have separate Sites for testing and production. |
| Subscriptions | Connect customers to products and handle recurring billing. Subscriptions automatically renew based on product intervals. Monitoring is required, automated Dunning can assist. |