Plans and pricing

Publish the terms customers accept

A price plan identifies the product, billing interval, currency, base charge and usage treatment. Keep the plan’s version with every accepted subscription so a catalogue edit cannot change an existing customer agreement. Draft and submitted plans remain internal until the Billing Manager reviews them.

The published plan is an immutable commercial reference. A new price or included allowance creates a new version with its own effective date. Decide how customers move to that version through a recorded subscription change and accepted terms. Retiring a plan removes it from new offers while preserving the subscriptions and invoices already using it.

Make tier behaviour explicit

Per-unit, graduated and volume pricing are different calculations. Per-unit pricing multiplies billable quantity by the published rate. Graduated pricing applies each band to the units inside that band. Volume pricing selects the applicable band from total billable quantity and applies that band’s rate to the quantity as defined in the plan.

Tier boundaries must be contiguous and unambiguous, with only the final band allowed to remain open ended. Keep any flat band amount explicit. The included allowance reduces metered quantity before tier selection, with a floor of zero. A customer at a boundary should receive the same result through the preview, billing run and invoice calculation.

Connect the correct meter

A metered plan points to a named meter with a defined unit and aggregation method. Summing API requests differs from taking maximum active seats or the latest recorded value. The commercial terms and meter definition must agree before the plan is published. A meter label alone cannot establish which events belong in a bill.

Keep the meter version with the rated inputs. Changing the aggregation rule affects a future reviewed plan or billing basis, while old invoices retain the rule and quantity they used. Events from another meter or customer cannot fill a missing quantity merely because their numeric values look plausible.

Review real pricing examples

Before publication, work through an empty-usage period, the included allowance, each tier boundary and a quantity above the last finite tier. Confirm currency precision and rounding at the configured line and tax boundaries. An annual commitment may have a different invoice interval from monthly operational reporting; the accepted terms must make that relationship clear.

For a graduated plan with the first ten billable units at two and the next five at one, fifteen units produce twenty-five before any declared base charge and tax. A volume plan using one for all fifteen units produces fifteen. These are calculation checks, not advertised commercial rates.

Keep commercial approval separate from setup

Admin manages technical identity and integration configuration. Billing Operator prepares prices and evidence. Billing Manager approves a different person’s submitted plan revision. A customer support view should not expose provider credentials or let someone silently republish a rate. The resulting price reference supplies the later invoice calculation and the explanation a customer can read when they question a charge.