interworks.cloud Platform employs a highly sophisticated billing engine in order to reflect a variety of billing scenarios for your customers. Billing settings can be configured on Account level and Product level, defining the charges on the invoices issued by the system for subscription-based products and services. The article below will explain the available billing options, and how they can be configured to support specific billing scenarios.

Account Billing Settings

The 'Accounts' module carries the most basic billing settings. These settings govern the general billing behavior of the system with regards to the charges that will be calculated as a result of any action the Account is going to make. The available options for the Accounts can be found at the 'Enable Ordering' section and are the following:

• Enable Prorate Billing: This setting defines if the charges will be calculated using proration. If checked, The proration billing period will be defined using the billing day setting. You can find more about proration here.
   
• Partial Charges Invoicing: If the proration is activated, you can use this setting to generate the invoice for the prorated charges either on the 'Order Day' of a product or service or on the next 'Billing Day', thus making for a more regulated accounting flow.

Product Pricing Settings

Some basic billing settings for subscription-based products lay on the 'Products' module. Those can be found at the 'Pricing' section:

• Usage Charge Rule: If the customer is functioning under proration, through this setting you can arrange the charges to be calculated either in analogy to actual per diem usage (e.g. if the customer purchases something within the billing period) or you can charge the entire amount of the product for the selected billing period, regardless of the usage.
   
•  Exclude from pro-rata: When this setting is enabled, the subscription for the product or service in question will not be created according to the proration settings that are defined on customer level, but will define a billing period starting immediately from the day the product was purchased, with this date as a billing date.
   
• Upfront Billing: You can check this option if you want to charge for any product or service in advance. A subscription to an upfront billed product will generate an invoice at the customers billing day, carrying the whole amount for the next billing period.
   

1st Scenario: The customer is billed every 1st of the month for a service that is billed at the end of each billing period

The customer has a billing cycle day set to 1st of the month, it's billed only on the 1st of the month and he purchases a service that is billed at the end of each billing period.

New subscription is purchased

The 1st purchase for 5 seats takes place within the billing period. The subscription life-cycle looks like this:

On the first billing day (1st May) the generated invoice will carry the charges for the 16 days that the service was used in April. The invoice of the 2nd billing day will carry the charges for May

New subscription is purchased + seats increase for the existing subscription

The 1st purchase for 5 seats takes place on the 15th of April and there is a second purchase for 3 seats on the 25th of April.

On the first billing day (1st May) the generated invoice will carry the charges for the 1st purchase product quantity for the 16 days plus the extra quantity of the 2nd purchase for the 6 days until the end of April. The invoice of the 2nd billing day (1st June) will carry the charges for the total quantity of the subscription for May

2nd Scenario: The customer is billed every 15th of the month for a service that is billed at the end of each billing period

The customer has a billing cycle day set to 15th of the month, it's billed only on the 15th  of the month and he purchases a service that is billed at the end of each billing period.

New subscription is purchased + seats increase for the existing subscription

The 1st purchase for 5 seats takes place on the 20th of April and there is a second purchase for 3 seats on the 5th of May.

On the first billing day (15th May) the generated invoice will carry the charges for the 1st purchase product quantity for the 26 days plus the extra quantity of the 2nd purchase for the 11 days until the end of billing period. The invoice of the 2nd billing day (15th June) will carry the charges for the total quantity of the subscription for the billing period (15th May - 14th June)

3rd Scenario: The customer is billed every 15th of the month for a service that is billed at the beginning of each billing period

The customer has a billing cycle day set to 15th of the month, it's billed only on the 15th  of the month and he purchases a service that is billed at the beginning of each billing period.

New subscription is purchased + seats increase for the existing subscription

The 1st purchase for 5 seats takes place on the 20th of April and there is a second purchase for 3 seats on the 5th of May.

On the first billing day (15th May) the generated invoice will carry the charges for the 1st purchase product quantity for the 26 days (20th April - 15th May) plus the extra quantity of the 2nd purchase for the 11 days until the end of billing period (5th May - 15th May) plus the charges for the total quantity for the next billing period(15th May - 14th June)