#dennis_de - multiple subscriptions
neon trout
Unfortunately not at the moment. If they all have the same billing cycle you can consolidate all of your subscriptions in to one but otherwise they will need to be separate subscriptions.
harsh shale
Is there a change planned as a feature here?
neon trout
Not as far as I know. I can put in a feature request but I can't guarantee that this will get added.
harsh shale
We just have monthly or annual base fees and alongside that monthly usage-based billing for consumption. In the case of monthly basic fees, I can pack them together in a subscription, but that's no longer possible with annual fees.
neon trout
Thank you for the clarification, I was about to ask
One other option that you have is tracking when your subscription goes through 12 cycles and then adding your yearly fee as a one time invoice item
harsh shale
Therefore I thought to be able to represent it technically better, I put the usage-based billing always separately as a separate subscription. No matter whether the basic fee is paid annually or monthly.
neon trout
How often do you bill on the usage based subscription?
harsh shale
The idea was that the customer books the monthly or yearly basic fee via checkout and then I add the subscription automatically....
harsh shale
How often do you bill on the usage based subscription?
monthly
We always calculate the usage in volume from the first day of the month to the last.
We have several tariffs (Pay-As-You-Go for 0€, Company Plan for 299€ monthly or yearly in advance) and besides always a fee per transaction which depends on which tariff you have booked. For the Pay-As-You-Go it is 0,20€ per transaction and for the Company Plan e.g. 0,10€ per transaction. If the info still helps.
We have created individual products for the tariffs and just once for the transactions and dadrunter the different prices.
Ah and perhaps important to know. We settle customers' transactions early when they reach thresholds in euros. Whereby this is supported by Stripe.
neon trout
Apologies for dropping off this thread for a bit. To clarify, are you using Stripe's built in metered subscription APIs or are you calculating the prices yourself and charging for them?
If I understand this properly, it does sound like you can consolidate this on to one subscription. I believe you can have a monthly fee and monthly metered usage on the same subscription and then all that would be missing is the yearly fee which as I mentioned might have to be done with a bit of custom code.
harsh shale
No problem. Exactly, for the usage we use the Subscription metered api.
I believe you can have a monthly fee and monthly metered usage on the same subscription and then all that would be missing is the yearly fee which as I mentioned might have to be done with a bit of custom code.
Do you have an example for the custom code?
You probably mean Subscription Schedules?
neon trout
This would be something other than subscription schedules actually. I am not sure if we have an example of it but will check
harsh shale
In the "Usage threshold" function, I can't specify a threshold lower than the base fee even though the overlay info says that only usage-based billing is considered. Is this a bug?
neon trout
Can you send me the ID of the subscription that that is on?
harsh shale
It's a test subscription (sub_1LK98EKSCBaxYA7anIMGft3b), but here we go 🙂
harsh shale
This would be something other than subscription schedules actually. I am not sur...
Can you give me a keyword to look for? So with which API endpoint do I get this implemented? You are talking about subscription plans right?
But these are subscription schedules (https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/subscription-schedules/use-cases)
neon trout
So initially I was just talking about monitoring when 12 cycles happens yourself and then making the API call to create an invoice item for your charge. We don't have example code for the waiting part but it should be our standard invoice item creation call https://stripe.com/docs/api/invoiceitems/create
Basically, when your subscription cycles, it automatically creates an invoice and adds an invoice item for all of your recurring prices. You can also add your own by making that call while the invoice is still in its draft state
harsh shale
So initially I was just talking about monitoring when 12 cycles happens yourself...
Ah I see... okay, that's not really a good option since we're shifting Stripe's logic partly to us....
We use Stripe Billing to avoid having to map complex logics ourselves.
compact marsh
👋 Pompey had to step away
let me know if you have any follow up questions 🙂
harsh shale
Please read through the conversation. Pompey was still checking.
compact marsh
It is a little long/complex thread, mind giving me a short summary?
Is the question still
Is there any option that multiple subscriptions that renew on the same day end up on one invoice? So each subscription does not have its own invoice?
harsh shale
Can you send me the ID of the subscription that that is on?
@compact marsh ^
harsh shale
It's a test subscription (sub_1LK98EKSCBaxYA7anIMGft3b), but here we go 🙂
@compact marsh ^
harsh shale
In the "Usage threshold" function, I can't specify a threshold lower than the ba...
@compact marsh ^
compact marsh
Apologies. I've looked but I'm not super familiar with the dashboard as our team mostly work with API questions.
flat ocean
Seems like a limitation in the Dashboard. I'd recommend reporting this to our support team and they can improve this: https://support.stripe.com/contact
harsh shale
The API apparently reports the error on submit as well.
Which parameter would be the right one in the API?
harsh shale
Seems like a limitation in the Dashboard. I'd recommend reporting this to our su...
The Discord support is really 1 with asterisk but the normal support is sometimes really bad, because exactly such error reports are often misunderstood or not forwarded.
flat ocean
https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions/create#create_subscription-billing_thresholds-amount_gte
but I assume it will error the same way (though worth testing quickly)
harsh shale
<https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions/create#create_subscription-billing_th...
I will try this out later.
flat ocean
Sounds good
harsh shale
Feel free to leave the thread open, I'll let you know once I've tested it.
flat ocean
I'll likely close in a bit (the server can get quite busy) but not for a while
harsh shale
Only I can no longer open a thread again?
flat ocean
You can't reopen the thread but you can ask a follow up question in #dev-help if needed. But I mostly answered your question I think. If you get the same error as the Dashboard but in the API it means it's not something we support yet
harsh shale
It seems that it is really not accepted by the API. And now? But multiple subscriptions?
flat ocean
What are you really trying to do? Like do you have one Price, two, three, more? What are those Prices exactly?
harsh shale
At the beginning, I asked whether one or more invoices are generated for multiple subscriptions with the same cycle. Thereupon the suggestion of your colleague was that one could pack everything into a subscription.
So that multiple invoices are not generated.
harsh shale
In the end, we would like to charge a basic base fee + usage-based transactions and also define a threshold here above which intermediate billing takes place.
flat ocean
that allows you to put the billing thresholds for that specific Price
harsh shale
Would <https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscription_items/update#update_subscription...
I have also just discovered and I wanted to test right away 🙂
flat ocean
you can't disable the billing cycle anchor reset though
but that might be good enough
harsh shale
That in turn would be a problem?
harsh shale
If the basic fee runs from the first day to the last day of the month and I bill sub-monthly through the threshold limits, then of course the cycle should not be reset.
flat ocean
you explicitly set that one to false, but the per SubscriptionItem one doesn't support it
harsh shale
Ah Ok, understand.
flat ocean
ah yeah you're right
maybe it just doesn't reset at all, which makes a lot of sense in the way you framed it
if we reset we'd charge the whole base fee again which would be... dumb lol
harsh shale
I will build a test case to see how the subscription items behave.
Are there any plans to expand the Billing API? For example, the mapping of real contracts with minimum terms or notice periods? Other providers like Chargebee & Co. can do that, too.
Of course, it would be great if Stripe would also map such things in the long term.
flat ocean
we're thinking about it, but not in the short term at least
harsh shale
So I have successfully deposited billing_thresholds usage_gte on the Subscription Item, however nothing happened after I just registered Usage.
Maybe you can look up -> subscription id: sub_1LK98EKSCBaxYA7anIMGft3b
and sub item id: si_M2DfdymcYD4NAa
flat ocean
I think billing thresholds happen async so I'd wait a bit
harsh shale
Okay, that makes sense. I was just wondering if this was an "amount" or a number. The documentation doesn't say in detail.
What do you think?
flat ocean
well it's an amount that is a number
so $100 USD is amount: 10000 because it's in cents
so if your Price is $0.05 per usage and your threshold is $10 it will fire when you record usage to 200
harsh shale
That was exactly the question... so whether it really is an amount... 🙂
Because normally the parameter is then with the "amount" addition, which is missing here.
Therefore, I thought, if necessary, the issue here is quantity.
flat ocean
ah gotcha I thought you were asking whether to pass a number like with the decimal 123.34 as we get that question a lot
harsh shale
No, that Stripe always works with cents, I have now understood, hehe.
flat ocean
🙂
harsh shale
When should the process run at the latest? So that I can test whether it is about an amount or the number?
Normally, however, I know that it is always dispatched directly...
flat ocean
I would assume quickly so I'm surprised if it hasn't run yet but I'm deep in something else (for another user) so will take a while
harsh shale
Don't stress, I'm here. I have created a second subscription for testing, the same issue.
harsh shale
It really seems to run via scheduler.... 4 minutes ago the invoice was generated...
Have already no longer believed it 🙂
Then I have to make another test case to see if it is an amount or a quantity.
flat ocean
yeah I know it's async but I thought it was faster than that, does it mostly work?
harsh shale
I am testing again... it doesn't seem to be dispatched in a queue but really run via scheduler, at least the timestamps indicate that.
harsh shale
14 minutes it took this time...
So I tested it again now and it seems that "billing_thresholds.usage_gte" is really the quantity and not an amount in cents.
What also fits is that the parameter does not include the word "amount".
Or am I missing something @flat ocean?
flat ocean
huh yeah
that is... so strange to me
it makes sense so that it works across Prices if you switch Prices, but it still "feels" off that this one takes a quantity of usage, versus a final amount
flat ocean
yeah I'm testing but will take a while to confirm since it's all async
but I think your read is right amount_gte is about the final amount, usage_gte is about the number of records reported
harsh shale
Do you have another idea?
It would be useful to describe this in more detail in the API documentation, best to pass this on to the team.
And the info on the dashboard should be updated as well, see screenshots at the very beginning.
flat ocean
another idea of what?