#florian-ruen_best-practices

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supple islandBOT
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chilly barnBOT
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signal cape
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Hello there,

The previous thread was closed, even if the question is related to it, I think not required to read all previous messages.
In the previous case, you suggest to not use subscription for this complex pricing model, but use only invoices when I want to bill a specific customer.

My question now is: where i can store the price of the product (default is 3% on transaction price with minimun of 0.25 / TiB), but sometime I want to apply better pricing for some customers (big clients, partners ...) ?

If I store in my database, the financial departements need to ask developers to change the price every time, so I prefer storing this in Stripe, but without using subscription I don't know what is the best practise for this (maybe using customer metadata)

Thanks for your help

daring garden
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Hmm didn't the Price API work for you? (Create Price API etc)

supple islandBOT
signal cape
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What do you means by Price API ?

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The problem here, it's that I can't really set on a product the price "3% on transaction price, with a minimun of 0.25 $ /TiB"
And the second problem is how to define a "global" pricing, but something a pricing per customer

rose oriole
rose oriole
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What Stripe integration are you using?

signal cape
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Understood, how to create price.
Is it possible to define two price for a single "Price" for example normal price is 0.03 (3%) and minimun price is 0.25, so when I fetch the price, I can get both of them to create invoice ?
Another thing: I don't see how to link a Price to a customer (without a subscription), to apply custom price

signal cape
rose oriole
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3% on transaction price
What is the "transaction price" exactly?

rose oriole
signal cape
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No, because I can't implement this kind of pricing model with Subscription (can't record usage with float, only integer, and with a not very clear invoice with pre-computed price)
So in the previous thread, it was suggested to keep usage on my side, and generate a invoice directly using stripe without subscription

rose oriole
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float, only integer
You can use smaller units, e.g. 1.01 unit is 101, just like currency in Stripe, where $1.5 is 150.

signal cape
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Yes, but my amount are more likely 0.0000589, and sometimes can be 1.5, depends on customer usage

rose oriole
# signal cape No, because I can't implement this kind of pricing model with Subscription (can'...

Another workaround could be:
Keep a Subscription with a $0 Price, to automatically create Invoices on regular basis, and maybe even recording usage with it. Then, when you get a invoice.created webhook event (https://docs.stripe.com/api/events/types#event_types-invoice.created) you can add an InvoiceItem to it, with the custom amount that you calculate yourself: https://docs.stripe.com/api/invoiceitems/create#create_invoiceitem-amount

rose oriole
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There must be some kind of minimal discrete unit in your system.

signal cape
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Yes, I can handle this way, but on the invoice, it's not very clear for the customer to understand the amount
He will see an amount, without the associated usage, so to recalculate, he will ask our support, and we can have a lot of requests for this

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My idea is to create 30 line item on invoice (one usage recorded per day, invoiced each month), with as description a clear text like "You have received X transaction, for a total size of 350 GiB, for the 2024/08/20. Because the 3% on XX amount is under the minimun requirements, this second one apply"

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So the customer can easily understand the total amount of the invoice, and to verify using the description data. do you see what i mean?

signal cape
# rose oriole Another workaround could be: Keep a Subscription with a $0 Price, to automatical...

Maybe I can do with this:

  • my customer click on a "Subscribe" button, I create a checkout session with setup mode (only to collect credit card and billing address) ;
  • the backend will listen checkout.session.completed to link a Subscription to the customer with $0 price ;
  • the backend record on my own database the usage (with a lot of details), each day at midnight;
  • when my backend receive invoice.created, fetch associated usage from my database and add InvoiceItem for each record to the invoice ;
  • remove usage from my own database for the next periode ;

Do you think this process can work ?
The problem here will be the same: if the subscription price is set to $0, how to handle a custom price for this customer ? and the default price ?
(i want to store prices in Stripe rather in my database, my database will only store usage recorded each day)

rose oriole
rose oriole
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You won't be able to use Stripe Prices, you will just need to calculate the total amount yourself, and create bespoke Invoice Items for each Invoice.

signal cape
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Maybe if I can modify an invoice with the webhook, I can store the price in the subscription (and not set it to $0)

So I create 2 products:

  • one called "Percentage price" of $0.03
  • one called "Minimum price" of $0.25

By default, in the subscription after the checkout.session.completed I put these prices there
At the time of the webhook event invoice.created, I retrieve the prices associated with the subscription to calculate the invoice

And we will be able to apply price exceptions directly on Stripe dashboard to put 0.015 or 0.00 for each customer
Can this work?

supple islandBOT
rose oriole
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At the time of the webhook event invoice.created, I retrieve the prices associated with the subscription to calculate the invoice
At this moment you can just delete one of the Invoice Items.

shrewd bay
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👋 taking over for my colleague. Let me know if there's any follow-up Qs I can answer!

signal cape
shrewd bay
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can you please summarize the ask?

signal cape
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I've a pricing model which is 3 % on transaction price, with a minimun of 0.25$ / TiB (each transaction have a price, and a size)
Because it's not really easy to use Billing meters (because I can record only integers not float, the invoice is not clear and easily understandable by the customer) I can't use this

In the first thread, a suggestion was to keep usage on my own, and create a invoice with Stripe each month (with custom line items, description ...)
Now, another suggestion is to keep subscription with $0 price only to schedule invoices, and listen to invoice.created to add/remove InvoiceItems

But my original question was: how to have a "default price" for all customers, and sometime attach a custom price for specific customer (partner with free price, or something like this)
Using subscription with $0 price not handle this.

So my suggestion/workaround with this workflow can I think handle this

shrewd bay
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Because it's not really easy to use Billing meters (because I can record only integers not float, the invoice is not clear and easily understandable by the customer) I can't use this
you can always make the meter count for the x10^n of the fraction

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I think we have an issue with the price modeling that we need to fix before talking about exceptions

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do you agree?

signal cape
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Yes I can use 10^n, but the problem with pre-computing the price, is that on the invoice, the amount will be very "strange" for the customer
If the customer want to re-calculate on his own to check the invoice, he can't do it easily. And I guess, it will contact our support to ask for details each time (with a lot of tickets maybe)

My idea is to create one LineItem per day (one usage record per day, billed each month)
With a very clear description like "2024/08/20: X transaction received (total size: 350 TiB, total price: $0). Price applied: 0.25 * 350 = 87.5 $"
Using this, it can easily understand the invoice without contact our support

Do you see what i means ?

shrewd bay
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Yes I do, so your problem is basically with the Invoice PDF rather than the subscription calculating your customer's invoice amount

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correct?

signal cape
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Yes, the values recorded I don't really care, what I what is a comprehensible invoice for the customer (and a way to list recorded values on my app for the customer to track their usage day by day, which seems not possible using billing meter)

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This is what billing meter, I think is not the best solution here.

shrewd bay
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and you can choose whether you want to show them this aggregated by month or by day

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This is what billing meter, I think is not the best solution here.
It is the best solution in your use case, you just need to use that data to either provide a detailed invoice PDF that you create on your own, or generate a link to your app where it explains the details based on the meter event summaries that I suggested earlier

signal cape
# shrewd bay and you can choose whether you want to show them this aggregated by month or by ...

Yes, but only got the pre-computed amount, not possible to add details on how the amount was calculated to add to the invoice. (I tried by adding keys to payload, works, but I can't retrived all of them, only value is present in response for list billing meter event summaries)

Recorded data

{
"identifier": "f6718c05-bfff-4977-bd0f-f1273d4cdafa",
"timestamp": 1723542623,
"event_name": "deals_sent_price_to_bill",
"payload": {
"1_total_deal_price_over_last_24h_in_attofil": "0",
"2_total_deal_size_over_last_24h_in_bytes": "1683627180032",
"3_total_deal_size_over_last_24h_in_tib": "0.15312",
"4_minimun_required_price_on_deal_size": "0.038281",
"5_three_percent_on_deals_price": "0",
"6_multiplied_by_100_and_ceil_minimun_price": "4",
"7_multiplied_by_100_and_rounded_three_percent_price": "0",
"client_address_id": "f02347452",
"stripe_customer_id": "cus_QbgF3mRoLcvdjA",
"value": "4"
}
}

Only the value or aggregated value is present in the response
So not very easy to generate a detailled invoice using this

shrewd bay
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I'm not sure I understand what you mean

signal cape
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When my app send a new billing meter record (for example a customer have sent 5 transactions, total price is 0, total size is 32 GiB = 0,03125 TiB, amount will be 0,03125 * 0.25 = 0.00078125 $)

I will record 78125 (x 100.000.000), so to bill the right price, the product price will be 0.0000001 / unit right ?
So on the invoice (if I record only this single value), the customer will be 78125 units at 0.0000001 / unit = 0.00078125 $
Not really easy to understand, that this amount means 5 transactions for a total of 32 GiB ...

And I can't, on my side create a detailled invoice PDF, using only the billing meter value of 78125 (I need to keep track on my own of how this amount was calculated)
My first idea was to store more info with the value (as you can see in JSON above), but only value is provided when I fetch billing meters events summaries

This is what billing meter is hard to use in that case, and I am trying to tind another solution

supple islandBOT
shrewd bay
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you shouldn't be storing the amount but rather the size

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so basically instead of sending 0,03125 you can send 3125

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and then the unit price changes to accommodate for this

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the unit should be what you choose to count for your customer

signal cape
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Yes but I got 2 price here: a normal price, and a minimun price, and it can't works

shrewd bay
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either transaction numbers or transaction size

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you can always have both

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with 2 different billing events

signal cape
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Yes, let's say, I've:

  • a biling meter called total_price to record the price (in my example 0)
  • a billing meter called total_size to record the size (in my example 0.03125, will record 3125)

On a product, I can setup only one billing meter to use, which one ?
If I create two product (one for size, one for price), add both of them to the subscription, the final price will take into account two product (here it's 0 for total_price, but if it's 50, the total amount will be 50*0.03 + 3125 * 0.000001 = 1.53125, whereas, I want to take the max amount, not both of them!)

shrewd bay
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you want max(50 *0.03, 3125*0.000001)

signal cape
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Yes, this is how I apply 3% of price, or 0.25 / TiB as minimum

shrewd bay
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that's not really possible then! it's way to complex to be taken care of by our subscription system

signal cape
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This is what I say billing meters can't work in this case 😉

shrewd bay
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in that case the best thing is to go back to my colleague's suggestion about creating one invoices each time

signal cape
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Yes, this can works perfectly. But my question today is, how to store the price.
The normal price is 3% and 0.25 / TiB (for all customers), but sometimes (for partners, best client), I want to apply another price (for example 0% and 0.10 / TiB)
I don't want to store this in my database, because the business department will need a developper to change the price

My question was: where can i store this price on Stripe (linked on a customer) easily

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It seems a solution can be:

  • create two product: one called product_1 with price 0.03, and another called product_2 with price 0.25
  • each time a customer subscribe, attach a subscription with those two products
  • on webhook event invoice.created, use my own record data and subscription prices to create the invoice amount (here 0.03 and 0.25)
    (for example here max(50 * 0.03, 0.03125 * 0.25))

but if the business department, want to change: go to Stripe dashboard, specific customer subscription, apply exceptions (for example 0% and 0.10 / TiB)
And my app, will see the new prices when invoice.created arrive with subscription specific prices (for example here max(50 * 0, 0.03125 * 0.1))

So the subscription is only used to schedule invoice correctly (based on when the customer subscribe etc...), the price is stored in Stripe
And i'm in charge of generating the invoice correctly

grand sigil
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My question was: where can i store this price on Stripe (linked on a customer) easily
maybe as metadata on a Customer object?

signal cape
grand sigil
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yes we usually recommend not storing complex stuctures in metadata, it's better to store an ID that then lets you look up context in your own database.
The Customer model as it exists currently doesn't have good support for "this Customer is a business that has multiple users under it" yes, if that's what you're referring to. You'd probably want multiple Customer objects(but then the complication is they all have a separate payment methods and subscriptions).

signal cape
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This is pretty much what I have.

signal cape
grand sigil
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not sure(it's hard for me to follow), should be possible to try it in test mode and see what happens

signal cape
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will do this afternoon. but there is no way to keep this open, at least for today (with the same contacts), to avoid having to start all over again while finding a solution / testing ?
Because the case is quite complicated, and re-explaining it each time does not simplify it, on the contrary

grand sigil
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no sorry, better to have a support ticket for long-running conversations, we do Discord in shifts and cross-region so can't really keep all the context

signal cape
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Understood, will try this this afternoon, let you known if I need more help

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Just one more question: the webhook event invoice.created is fired before or after invoice creation ?
My question is, is it possible to add/remove InvoiceItem, only by using the invoice ID, and the invoice update api call at this time ?

grand sigil
signal cape
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So, If I'm using the checkout.session.completed to create the subscription, the first invoice will be $0, finalized immediatly, but no the other one
I'll try using this

signal cape
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Based on what I can read here: https://docs.stripe.com/api/invoiceitems
I see that invoice items can be added before the invoice is ready

It means, each day I can add an invoice item to an upcoming invoice right ? Maybe I can use this to replace billing meters in my case
Each day at midnight, at an invoice item with the usage for the last 24h and so one each day

Invoice Items | Stripe API Reference

Complete reference documentation for the Stripe API. Includes code snippets and examples for our Python, Java, PHP, Node.js, Go, Ruby, and .NET libraries.

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(or I can listen invoice.created and add events at the same, both are the same I think)

grand sigil
signal cape
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Is there a better approach ?

Between:

  • add invoice items each day to an invoice
  • add all at once at invoice.created
grand sigil
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the options are these , I would say.

image.png
signal cape
rustic pond
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hi there!

signal cape
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and the amount is not required, if I provided price_data right ?
the doc say price or price_data, but nothing about amount

rustic pond
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and the amount is not required, if I provided price_data right ?
correct