Billing process and charging dates in Pre-paid mode

Resolution

When using pre-paid mode users will be charged on day 6 or 7 after an invoice has been opened.

The states of the invoices can be changed according to the following diagram:

Note: The invoices manually created are not updated by the automatic billing process.

Example

An application subscribes to a paid service with a fixed cost in the middle of the month (15th), pre-paid mode:

• Day 1 - 15th - The billing cycle creates an invoice, state Open.
  • At the time of the application creation, if the 3scale billing cycle has not run yet, an invoice will be created when the billing cycle runs at the same day. If the billing cycle has already finished, the invoice will be created the next day with the Open state.
• Day 2 - 16th - The billing cycle finalizes the invoice, state Finalized.
• Day 3 - 17th - The billing cycle does not update the invoice.
• Day 4 - 18th - The billing cycle issues the invoice. State Pending with Issued On date set to current date and Due date after 2 days.
• Day 5 - 19th - The billing cycle does not update the invoice.
• Day 6 - 20th - The billing cycle charges the invoice, state Paid or Unpaid if the payment failed.

So generally, 6 days after opening an invoice the users are charged. However issuing an invoice can some times take 3 days instead of 2 days, therefore users may be charged on day 7.

At the beginning of the next month an invoice will be created with the variable costs and any fixed costs that the plan may have.

Additional Notes:

• The setup fee is a one-time charge which is applied upon subscription. If the application already existed, an invoice won't be created for that setup fee. Please refer to Pricing documentation.
• If the new plan has a higher fixed cost, please refer to the documentation Mid-month upgrades > Prepaid billing for a detailed example.

• Refer to the following 3scale documentation for more details:

  • Pricing
  • Automated billing process