Implementation Guide
Use this guide to set up Chargebee, from team access and the product catalog through payments, checkout, and go-live.
The steps cover subscription billing, pricing, customer subscriptions, and payments.
We recommend you follow these steps on your TEST Site. Once you have set up and tested your entire configuration and integration, you can refer to the go-live checklist to finalize your LIVE Site.
Basic Settings
To integrate Chargebee into your business operations, start with these settings.
1. Add Your Team Members
Add your team members to collaborate for the successful integration.
Navigate to Settings > Team Members > click on + Invite Members to invite a team member to use Chargebee. Additionally, you can determine the user access level as well. To edit or remove a team member's role, click on the three dots next to the team member. Learn more about roles.
2. Clear Demo Data
Delete any sample or test data from your site before creating your own data.
Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Test Site Data > click Delete or Repopulate Sample Data.
3. Configure Billing Currencies
Set up all the currencies in which you want to sell your products to your customers. In addition to the base currency, you can process transactions in foreign currencies by adding more currencies.
To set up your currencies, click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Currencies > Add Currency.
Learn more about currencies.
4. Billing Frequencies
Set up billing frequencies at a site level, based on your business needs, so they are available in all your plans and addons.
To set up, click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Billing > Product Catalog.
Learn more about setting up billing frequency.
Next, visit the product catalog module to set up your plans and products.
Set up your Plans and Products
Product Catalog helps you define your product and service offerings and the price at which you want to sell those to your customers.
Save time with Catalog Setup Assistant
Let Chargebee AI draft product families, plans, addons, charges, prices, features, and entitlements from a pricing page, document, or description. Available on your test and sandbox sites.
Try Catalog Setup Assistant1. Set up Product Family
A product family in Chargebee is a way to organize and categorize your various products or services, along with their associated plans, addons, and charges.
It simplifies management of your product catalog and lets you offer different options to your customers.
Example
A SaaS business offering CRM and HRMS can create separate product families for each application, grouping their respective plans and addons.
Learn more about the product families in Chargebee.
2. Define Pricing and Billing Plans
Create plans (services) offered to your customers and specify the billing period and pricing structure. You can choose from the following pricing models to create your prices:
- Flat fee
- Per Unit
- Tiered
- Volume
- Stairstep
Learn more about plans in Chargebee.
See also
If you want to charge your customers based on usage or consumption of these products and services, select This plan is metered.
You can then send usage data for each customer to Chargebee. Chargebee uses that data to compute the invoice value.
Learn more about Chargebee's Usage-Based Billing feature.
3. Configure Revenue Enhancements
Enhance your revenue streams with these optional features:
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Addons: Suggest additional services or products to your customers during the subscription process. Learn more about addons.
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Charges: Collect charges for one-time services or products, such as Onboarding, Dev Services, Support Services, and One-Time Events. Learn more about charges.
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Coupons: Offer discounts to your customers by configuring percentage-based or fixed amount-based coupons, which can be applied to invoices or specific products. Set coupon validity as needed. Learn more about coupons.
Set up Payment Gateway
You need to connect a Payment Gateway to Chargebee before you can start accepting payments.
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Go to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Payment Gateways and configure the payment gateway.
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Once the payment gateway is connected, enable or disable the payment methods that you would like to offer to your customers.
See also
- Learn more about supported payment gateways by Chargebee.
- Learn more about enabling payment methods supported by the payment gateways.
Set up your Customer Signup Process
Chargebee supports both self-serve and sales-driven onboarding motions.
Follow the method that applies to your business.
1. Self-serve Customer Onboarding
If you have a self-serve onboarding motion for your business, you can embed Chargebee Checkout into your website.
You can integrate Chargebee Checkout in three different ways:
| Options | Coding Required? | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Payment Link | No code | Generate Payment Links to share with your customers via email or messaging. When customers access the payment link, they enter their contact and payment information in the Chargebee Checkout widget. Learn more about Payment Links. |
| Drop-In Script | Low code | Add a Drop-In Script to the Subscribe button on your website. When customers click it, they enter their contact and payment information in the Chargebee Checkout widget. Learn more about Drop-In Script. |
| API-based integration | Yes | Build your own Checkout using our APIs. Learn more about API-Based Integration. |
2. Sales-driven Customer Onboarding
Sales-driven onboarding creates customers and subscriptions from the Chargebee UI, the API, or a third-party integration.
| Options | Description |
|---|---|
| Manual Customer Onboarding | Create Subscription via the Chargebee UI. While creating subscriptions, you can enter your customer details, add plans to the subscription, and send invoices to the customer. |
| Automated Customer Onboarding |
|
Keep Your App in Sync with Chargebee
Set up Webhooks so that your application can be kept up to date on key events that happen in Chargebee, for example, a successful payment, subscription cancellation, and more. You can use this information to trigger feature provisioning or account cancellation on your application.
You can create up to five Webhooks.
To use Chargebee webhooks and events in your SaaS application, follow these steps:
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Set up a Webhook in Chargebee.
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Implement a Webhook Receiver in Your Application a. Create an endpoint or route to receive incoming webhook notifications from Chargebee in your SaaS application. This endpoint should be publicly accessible over HTTPS.
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Process Webhook Events a. Use the
event_typefield to identify the type of event. Examples includesubscription_createdandinvoice_paid.Learn more about events supported by Chargebee. b. Implement logic to handle each type of event accordingly in your application.
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Test Your Webhooks using Chargebee UI.
Learn more about testing webhooks.
See also
Relevant Documentation:
Learn more about how to set up Chargebee webhooks for receiving real-time updates.
Billing Settings
Chargebee offers a range of customizable options for billing configurations, subscription management, and logic implementation.
Billing and Payment Configuration Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Charge customers based on usage | If you want to charge your customers based on what they use, configure Usage-Based Billing for your products. |
| Proration mode and proration | You can set up the proration mode for your site in Chargebee to control how prorated charges and credits are calculated. A change in the price of the subscription, prorated credits, and charges can be raised to ensure proper billing. Learn more to set up proration mode and proration. |
| Select a common billing date | With Chargebee's Calendar Billing feature, you can set the billing date for your customers, regardless of the date they sign up. Learn more about setting up a calendar billing feature. |
| Set up payment terms | Learn more to set up payment terms with your customer to collect your customer's outstanding invoices. Payment terms can be enabled for both offline and online payments if required. Note: Once enabled it cannot be disabled. |
| Combine charges into a single invoice | When your customer subscribes to multiple services and if the renewal date is the same for the subscriptions, instead of sending out multiple invoices, use consolidated invoicing from Chargebee to consolidate all invoices into one. Best practices - You can configure Calendar Billing if you are enabling consolidated invoices such that all renewals fall on the same date. |
See also
Learn more about billing settings.
Test and Launch
Test your integration fully, then start the transition to your Live Site.
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Test your integration: Before you go live, test subscription scenarios to check that your integration works. You can use the Time Machine feature from Chargebee to simulate subscription lifecycle events and see if everything works as expected.
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Start go-live process: When you're ready to move from your sandbox account to your live account, follow the go-live checklist to walk through setting up your live account and switching your integration to work with live.
Customer Facing Essentials
Configure one or more of the following features for your business and billing operations.
Reflect your Brand
Give customers a consistent experience across touchpoints like invoices and emails with a look and feel that matches your brand.
Configure your brand elements by selecting Settings > Configure Chargebee > Brand Styles.
Learn more about branding.
Localize your Customer Experience
Chargebee has many supported languages that can be used for your customer-facing pages such as Checkout, portal, and emails.
Learn more about language capabilities by Chargebee.
Configure Invoices and Credit Notes
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Configure the invoices as per your business use case by navigating to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Customer Facing Essentials > Invoices, credit notes, and quotes > Invoices. You can access all your invoices in the Invoices tab.
Learn more about invoices.
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Create either a Refundable or Adjustable Credit Note, depending on the invoice status. To customize your credit notes, navigate to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Invoices, credit notes, and quotes > Credit Notes.
Learn more about credit notes.
Self-serve portal for Customers
Enable customers to access and manage their accounts and subscriptions through the Chargebee-hosted customer portal.
Through the self-serve portal, customers can:
- View and update their personal and billing information.
- View their subscription details and billing history.
- Manage their payment methods.
Learn more about the customer portal.
Optimize Customer Communication
Chargebee enables you to configure emails that trigger at various stages of your customer's journey, including subscription actions, payments, invoices, and customer retention efforts.
Chargebee's email notifications to your customers fall into these key categories:
- Subscription Management: Emails related to subscription changes and updates.
- Invoices, Credit Notes and Payments: Notifications regarding billing and payment transactions.
- Revenue Recovery: Strategies to recover potentially lost revenue.
- Customer Retention: Emails aimed at retaining and engaging customers.
- Self-Service Portal Emails: Communications linked to your customer portal.
- Cart Abandonment Emails: Encouraging customers to complete abandoned transactions.
- Gift Subscriptions: Correspondence for gifting subscription services.
For each category, customize existing default email notifications or create tailored messages to suit your business needs.
Learn more about email notifications.
Manage Taxes
Configure taxes for regions where you collect taxes.
Learn more about taxes.
Revenue recovery
When you process payments, transactions can be declined for reasons such as insufficient funds, expired cards, or connectivity issues. Chargebee's Dunning functionality retries payments automatically and sends reminders based on your Dunning Configuration.
Learn more about Dunning.
Manage Customer Privileges for Your Services
Chargebee Entitlements allow you to control what features of your products or services can be accessed by your customers based on the plan, addon, or charge they subscribe to.
Learn more about Chargebee Entitlements.
Enhance Data Tracking with Custom Fields
Use custom fields to capture extra customer or subscription details. After you create them, you can use these fields on hosted checkout pages and invoices, and through the web interface and API.
Learn more about custom fields.
Set up Third-Party Connections
Chargebee has native integrations for finance, CRM, and other applications in the marketplace.