Forums/Community/Community Support
Billing for component quantities immediately
tvincent
asked this on February 02, 2011 04:29 pm
I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how to make component quantities useful. I've read through your docs and as far as I understand it, quantity based components are billed at the end of each payment cycle. The problem with this is the following scenario:
- Company signs up for my software, is billed for their first
user (component: user x 1)
- Company adds 9 more users to the account the next day
- Our app adjusts the "user" component to 10
- The system waits until a month later and bills them for 10 users
The problem here is that this account gets 9 users, effectively free, for the duration of the billing cycle. I'm not sure how to trigger a charge for the 9 difference in accounts using the API. Without being able to do this we're really opening ourselves up for some customer confusion and billing discrepancies using any of the component billing features. The reason I want to charge them right away is that it doesn't look like Chargify allows for pro-rated billing.
Anyone have any ideas or solutions for this issue?
Comments
Hi there,
You're right: components are only billed at the end of the billing period, so your customer could get a free ride if they don't end up paying.
Merchants sometimes work around this by doing one of the following:
* Having a flat-rate product fee, setup fee, etc, that collects some money up front, as a means of qualifying their customer and making sure they have at least the ability/willingness to pay something. * Processing a one-time charge on the customer's account for much the same reason as the first bullet point.
There is no way right now to have components that pre-charge the customer, such as for pre-purchasing text messages, etc. We'll be working on more functionality like that in Q2, but for now, Components are just post-billed.
Thanks.
--- Lance
I've had the same question. Based on the number of posts about it, it seems that the issue is pretty popular among merchants.
Various workarounds are just clumsy.
Chargify development team, it would be really great if you could address this issue sooner rather than later.
I'm about to go live and it could be a deal-breaker for me, ie a reason to switch to a different billing system
I agree with other posters. We have developed a script to work with Chargify API and in less that 3 months have brought 9 new accounts to Chargify. We' be bringing even more business to Chargify via new accounts almost every month. Each of our client pretty much has a need for a component type of billing, but right now we keep giving them a frustrating answer when telling them that they cannot bill their customers right away for a component. To have billing at the end of current cycle, as the only option really makes no sense. I do hope that this feature cab included very soon.
--- Olivier
Just checking on this. I still don't see an option and this question is about to have it's first birthday. I'm not trying to pile on, I know you're dealing with capacity issues at the moment. I just want to make sure I'm not missing something.
Thanks,
Bob
Hey Bob, no problem.
There is a way to start subscriptions with components added right at the start, but it's only available if the API is used to start the sub. If components are added after the sub was started, then you get the post-billed behavior.
Sorry we haven't gotten to it. Capacity problems, yes, plus just lots of competing feature requests.
--- Lance
OK, thanks for the quick response. I think what I'll do is hang a callback off of the method that adds a quantity component. The callback will check for the days left in the billing cycle and do a one-off charge.
Okay, Bob, that should work. I know it's a bit messy, but I know some merchants do exactly that.
--- Lance