Usage based billing
Usage based billing charges customers for what they actually used, on top of the base price of a product: disk space per gigabyte, power per kWh, or anything you count yourself, such as phone extensions. A usage position is either measured automatically by the product's module or entered by you before the invoice is created.
How usage is billed
Usage is billed in arrears. It appears on the regular contract invoice, together with the base fee of the next period, and covers the period that just ended. The first invoice of a product never contains usage.
Each hosting gets one invoice line named after the service with the suffix "Verbrauchsbasiert". The line lists every position with its value, unit and price.
Usage settings are copied to a hosting when it is set up. Changing prices on the product later only affects new orders, existing hostings keep the prices they were ordered with.
Set up usage based billing for a product
You need a product whose module delivers usage data, or a value you can count yourself.
Open the product and switch to the Module (Modul) tab.
Scroll to the section Usage based billing (Verbrauchsbasierte Abrechnung). Positions the module can measure appear as cards on their own.
Turn on Active (Aktiv) on the card you want to bill and click Configure (Konfigurieren).
Enter the price steps and choose the calculation method, then click Done (Fertig).
Save the product.
Turning Active off and saving removes the position from the product.
Positions measured by a module
These modules deliver usage data automatically. With every other module you can only use manual positions.
Module | What is measured | Unit |
|---|---|---|
Plesk | Disk usage of all subscriptions of the hosting | Gigabyte |
Tenantos | Power draw of the server | Watt |
Colocation (DCIM) | Power and bandwidth per connected sensor | kWh, MBit/s |
For colocation devices you set the prices on the Billing (Abrechnung) tab of the device instead of on the product.
The field Capture every … minutes (Erfassung alle … Minuten) sets how often a value is stored, from 5 to 1440 minutes. The default is 60. A shorter interval gives finer charts but makes the database grow faster. It has no effect on manual positions.
Manual positions
Use a manual position for anything no module can measure, for example extensions of a hosted phone system or licence seats.
In the section Usage based billing, click New usage billing (Neue Verbrauchsabrechnung).
Enter a Display name (Anzeigename). The Technical name (Technischer Name) is filled in from it.
Choose the Unit (Einheit). If none of the built-in units fits, choose Custom (Individuell) and enter your own Unit name (Einheitenbezeichnung), up to 64 characters.
Enter the price steps, click Done and save the product.
The unit name is shown wherever the unit appears: on invoices, in the shop and in the customer area, for example "5 extensions" and "2.00 € per extension". If you rename it later, existing hostings of the product show the new name too.
Enter the values before invoicing
You enter the value of a manual position once per hosting and billing period, at the moment the invoice is due.
When the invoice is due, it is created with the status Waiting for input (Warte auf Eingabe). You get a notification, and the invoice list shows a red notice with links to the waiting invoices.
Open the invoice. For every position, enter the value of the billing period shown. 0 is allowed.
Click Save usage values and finalize invoice (Verbrauchswerte speichern und Rechnung finalisieren).
For customers with collective invoices, no invoice is created until the values exist. Enter them in the dialog Manual usage values (Manuelle Verbrauchswerte) on the invoice list.
An invoice with a manual position waits until you enter the values. There is no reminder period and no default value, so the base fee on that invoice is not billed either until you finish it.
Price steps
A position has one or more price steps, each with a Start value (Startwert) and a Price (Preis). A step applies as soon as the usage is above its start value. The whole usage is then billed at the price of that one step, the steps are not added up.
Enter the steps in ascending order of their start value.
The number in the price column header sets the unit group, for example a price per 10 gigabytes. Started groups are rounded up.
A step with a price of 0 appears as "Inklusivvolumen" (included volume) on the invoice.
Give customers a free allowance
Set the first step to start value 0 and price 0, and add a second step that starts at the allowance. Then turn off Bill data points before the step start (Datenpunkte vor dem Schritt-Start berechnen?). The switch is on by default, and with it on the whole usage is billed once the allowance is exceeded.
Steps | Usage | Switch on | Switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
0 for 0.00 €, 100 for 0.10 € | 80 | 0.00 € | 0.00 € |
0 for 0.00 €, 100 for 0.10 € | 150 | 150 × 0.10 € = 15.00 € | 50 × 0.10 € = 5.00 € |
Calculation method
A module stores many values during a billing period. The Calculation method (Berechnungsart) decides which single value is billed.
Method | Billed value |
|---|---|
Current value (Aktueller Wert) | The last value of the period |
Minimum | The smallest value |
Maximum | The largest value |
Average (Durchschnitt) | The average of all values, rounded to a whole number |
95%, 90% or 85% percentile (Perzentil) | The largest value after discarding the top 5%, 10% or 15%. Common for bandwidth. |
What your customers see
Customers see usage prices before they order and their current usage afterwards.
Shop: the product page shows a box with the usage prices in addition to the base price, for example "2.00 € / GB" or one line per price step.
Customer area, product page: one card per position. Measured positions show the current value and the current price, manual positions show the price only.
Customer area, Usage (Verbrauch): a chart per measured position for today, the current week, the current or the last billing month. Turn on Hide graph (Graph ausblenden) on a position to leave out its chart.