launvdw-billing | Stripe Developers | Page 1

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 5:02 AM

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hi there, could you give an example?

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 5:10 AM

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Hi Alex, thank you for your response.

Let me send you a screenshot of what is happening for context

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I have a product with 3 prices
1 price is a flat fee of say $29
with 2 metered prices that will be determined by usage records

When a user subscribes on the 7th of a month I set the billing anchor to be the 1st of the next month,
so the user will be prorated up until then. (This is working)

but what is also happening is that the user's first invoice appears to contain the flat fee price twice

April 7 - April 30 (prorated)
Remaining time on the Plan
April 30 - May 31 (full price)

I want the first invoice that a user will receive to only include the first prorated flat fee + usage records that incurred within this period

Here is the desired outcome

If I sign up on the 7th April;

on the 1st of May I should receive an invoice for (prorated flat fee + usage records on metered prices)
on the 1st of June I should receive an invoice for (full flat fee + usage records on metered prices)
and so on...

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 5:17 AM

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gimme a while to wrap my head around this

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 5:21 AM

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100% thank you Alex

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 5:22 AM

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hmmm, can you also share the subscription id for that screenshot which you showed me? It'd look like sub_123

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 5:23 AM

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sub_id sub_1KlwvWIhnflvQVbic8yS0wme

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 5:33 AM

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can you share why you updated the subscription after first creating it?

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 5:37 AM

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certainly,

The subscription is created with $0 (free) based prices as the first plan is a free plan

When the user upgrades, it is then updated by removing the free price items and replacing them with the billable price items.

During the subscription.update, I also use billing_cycle_anchor: 'unchanged' to keep the original anchor that the subscription was created with (and to prevent from the subscription.update to trigger an immediate charge)

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 5:58 AM

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if you require any more information, or want to know any specific details, please feel free to ask 🙂

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 5:59 AM

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it's going to take me a while, let me discuss with someone else and then get back to you, will let you know if i need more details too 😄

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 6:00 AM

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Sure thing, thank you for looking into this Alex, much appreciated!

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 6:55 AM

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@plain sorrel from what i understand, your main concern here is that the user's first invoice appears to contain the flat fee price twice. Looking at your current subscription : You actually have 4 Prices (not 3) in your Subscription when updating : https://dashboard.stripe.com/test/logs/iar_q1L8A2fN5lDnpa

That's why you have an additional flat fee

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does this help?

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 7:10 AM

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Only one of those prices is the billable flat fee

From the four prices,

1 is the $29 flat fee
2 are metered prices
1 is a $0 flat fee to simply indicate an inclusive feature

but on the first invoice the user receives, it is as if it contains the $29 flat fee twice

1 for the prorated amount leading up to the invoice and then again it is being added for the next month (as if it is charging in advance)

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I think to perhaps guide the question,

On the screenshot I attached above, why is both

7 April - 30 April and
30 April - 31 May

appearing on the same invoice

The desired outcome would be to have the invoice only include
a prorated flat fee for 7 April - 30 April + possible usage records for metered prices.

Then the billing cycle 30 April - 31 May would be received as the next invoice for the full flat fee of $29 + possible usage records for metered prices that occurred within this cycle

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I believe what could solve this,

Setting the billing anchor to the end of the month instead of the first of the next month (but this is not supported by Stripe)

or

Charge for fixed price items in arrears as opposed to upfront (is this possible?)

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 7:33 AM

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okay, i think i get it - for per-seat subscription i.e. your flat fee pricing each month, it will always be charged up front.

The pro-rated amount from 7 April -30 April is included into the following invoice. The $29 is charged up front for 30 April - 31 May.

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have you considered adding the flat fee to the Price model instead? Something like this?

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 7:39 AM

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Mmmh, so for the "flat fee" of $29

instead of it being a Standard pricing,

To rather make it a Volume pricing?

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So from this

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To this

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floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 7:40 AM

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weren't your other 2 prices metered pricing?

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 7:40 AM

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and then we create a usage record of 1 for this?

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 7:40 AM

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hmmm

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i was thinking of adding the flat fee to your other two Prices

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but i guess you could consider doing it your way instead

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 7:40 AM

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Ooooh, I see

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 7:41 AM

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BUT i do want to highlight one point

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metered pricing doesn't have proration

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so if you're looking to prorate the flat fee, this method isn't going to work

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you would need to go back to the per-seat pricing

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most merchants would typically want their user to pay the flat fee upfront though, and not at the end of the month

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there really isn't a great solution here i guess

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there're multiple workarounds, but most would require you to build additional custom logic

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 7:44 AM

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For broader context perhaps, hat we are trying to achieve is

Subscribe to this plan
which has a base fee of $29 / month

this includes 10 units of X and 10 units of Y

any additional units would be charged on a per unit bases

So the unit pricing is what is metered and the flat fee is what we added as a standard price

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 7:44 AM

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would you want the flat fee to be prorated?

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 7:45 AM

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Yes, this would be to accomodate a user signing up in the middle of the month

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 7:45 AM

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then you would still need to do whatever you're doing now

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 7:45 AM

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but a workaround could be that we do not anchor billing to a specific date and therefor we would not need to prorate and therefor we could add the flat fee as a usage base pricing

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mmmh

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the trade offs of building things 😅

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 7:47 AM

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there're multiple workarounds, but most do require some kind of custom logic. For example, you could create a one off invoice item to be added to the invoice at the end of the month. But like you said, there are trade offs : you would have to manually handle creating the invoice item and then calculate prorations yourself

plain sorrel Apr 8, 2022, 7:49 AM

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I see, well this has been most useful! I really appreciate you taking the time to work through this and really understand our use case to provide constructive feedback!

Top notch support! 🙌 💯

floral hinge Apr 8, 2022, 7:51 AM

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glad to have been able to help and sorry that it took me so long to wrap my head around your use case 😅

#launvdw-billing