Charges

Your Chargebee product catalog allows you to define plans and addons that represent your products and services. However, often you may need to bill your customers for products or services that are non-recurring. Some of these charges may be ad-hoc and not part of your standard product catalog.

Non-recurring addons and one-time charges help you bill your customers in such cases. These can be applied to your customers via the Chargebee user interface or via API.

Non-recurring Addon

In addition to plans and addons in Chargebee that are billed in a recurring manner, you can also create non-recurring addons. Such addons would represent products or services that are charged for in an ad-hoc manner and either purchased once immediately or scheduled for purchase when certain events happen such as subscription activation, trial start etc.

A non-recurring addon can also be applied against a customer record, in which case, it is not associated with any particular subscription.

Modelling a non-recurring or ad-hoc purchase as a non-recurring addon in Chargebee rather than as a one-time charge gives you greater insights around which type and how many addons were applied to your subscriptions using reports.

Non-recurring addons can be applied to customers or subscriptions in several ways:

Add Addon Action

The Add One-Time Addon action can be found on the details page of both a Subscription or a Customer.

• Applying to a Customer:

  1. Select the one-time addon to apply.
  • If needed, change the price/quantity of the addon in the Unit Price field. If you want to price your addons in fractional amounts with more than two decimal places or if you want to charge for fractional quantities, you can enable multi-decimal support.
  • Select a coupon to apply. (Only one-time coupons that are applicable to the addon are available here).
  • Service period:
    • Choose the time period that the addon service is to be accounted for by specifying the from and to dates/times of the period.
    • The default period is the current date/time and can be set to a period from any date/time in the past and into the future.
    • Chargebee accounts for this service period while running the revenue recognition and deferred revenue reports.

    Note The time component can only be chosen when your site runs on millisecond-based billing mode.

• Applying to a Subscription

  1. Select the one-time addon to apply. Any one-time addon, including those that may have been restricted for the plan chosen, can be applied using this action.
  • If needed, change the price of the addon. If you want to price your addons in fractional amounts with more than two decimal places or if you want to charge for fractional quantities, you can enable multi-decimal support.
  • Service period:
    • Choose the time period that the addon service is to be accounted for. Specify the from and to dates/times of the period.
    • The period must start after the subscription start date/time.
    • Chargebee accounts for this service period while running the revenue recognition and deferred revenue reports.

    Note The time component can only be chosen when your site runs on millisecond-based billing mode.

  • Choose whether to invoice the addon charge immediately or to add it to unbilled charges of the subscription.

Edit Subscription

You can also add one-time addons after clicking Edit Subscription on the details page of a subscription.

1. Choose the one-time addon to charge for. Any addons that have been restricted for the plan selected, will not be available.

• If needed, change the price of the addon. If you want to price your addons in fractional amounts with more than two decimal places or if you want to charge for fractional quantities, you can enable multi-decimal support.
• Select the event at which to charge the addon. For some events, you can also choose whether the addon is charged just once or every time the event happens.
• Service period:
  • Choose the number of days that the addon service is to be accounted for. The period is considered to start on the day/time the addon is charged.
  • Chargebee accounts for this service period while running the revenue recognition and deferred revenue reports.

Adding via API

A couple of the API calls for charging non-recurring addons are as below:

• Create invoice for addon: immediately add a non-recurring addon to a customer or subscription.
• Charge addon at term end: add a non-recurring addon to a subscription at the end of its current term.

One-time Charges

You can collect a one-time payment from a customer or a subscription using the Add Quick Charge option. This option can be quite useful, especially when you come across scenarios where you have to collect payments from customers for goods or services that are not normally included as a part of their subscription model. It can also be used when you want to collect payment for a product or service that is not modeled into your system like a non-recurring addon.

A one-time charge can be applied to a customer or a subscription via the Chargebee UI or via API:

Add Charge via UI

On the Chargebee user interface, the Add Addon action on the details page of either a Subscription or a Customer can be used to add a one-time charge. (Shown below for a Customer)

• Applying to a Customer

  1. Specify the amount for the charge.
  • Select a coupon to apply. (Only one-time coupons that are applicable to the invoice amount are available here).
  • Service period:
    • Choose the time period that the charged service is to be accounted for. Specify the from and to dates/times of the period.
    • The default period is the current date/time and can be set to a period from any date/time in the past and into the future.
    • Chargebee accounts for this service period while running the revenue recognition and deferred revenue reports.

    Note The time component can only be chosen when your site runs on millisecond-based billing mode.

  • Provide a description for the charge.

• Applying to a Subscription

  1. Specify the amount for the charge.
  • Service period:
    • Choose the time period that the charged service is to be accounted for. Specify the from and to dates/times of the period.
    • The period must start after the subscription start date/time.
    • Chargebee accounts for this service period while running the revenue recognition and deferred revenue reports.

    Note The time component can only be chosen when your site runs on millisecond-based billing mode.

  • Provide a description for the charge.
  • Choose to invoice the charge immediately or add it to unbilled charges. An email notification can also be sent when the invoice is generated.
    • Coupons cannot applied to the charge if invoiced immediately.
    • However, when the charge is added to unbilled charges, any invoice-amount coupon on the subscription will also apply to this charge.

Note: You cannot view the total one-time charges for a Customer on the UI.

Add Charge via API

Here are a couple of API calls that can be used to add charges:

• Create invoice for charge: immediately add a charge to a customer or subscription:
• Add charge at term end: add a charge to a subscription at the end of its current term.

Adding One-time Addons and Quick Charges

In addition to creating invoices for a single addon or quick charges, you can also create invoices for multiple charges and non-recurring addons together. When you want to add multiple ad-hoc charges or non-recurring addons to a customer or a subscription, you can make use of the Add One-time Addons and Quick Charge action.

To raise an Invoice for multiple ad-hoc charges and addons, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the details page of the customer or subscription.

2. Click Add One-Time Addons and Quick Charge on the Action panel.

   

3. In the Add One-time Addons and Quick Charges page, click Add Quick Charge to add any ad-hoc charges.

4. In the Add Charge pop-up, enter the following details:

   
   • Currency: Specify the currency for the charge.
   • Amount: Specify the amount for the charge.
   • Service Period: Select the time period that the charged service is to be accounted for. Specify the from and to dates/times of the period. Chargebee considers this service period for the revenue recognition and deferred revenue reports. Note : The time component can only be chosen when your site runs on millisecond-based billing mode.
   • Provide a description for the charge.
   • Select Taxable if this charge is taxable (if left unselected, tax is not applied on this charge).
   • Click Add. You can use Add Quick Charge to add more charges as required.

5. Click Add One-Time Addon to add non-recurring addons.

   • Select an addon from the drop-down list.
   • The price of the addon as configured gets displayed. You can modify this price if needed. If you want to price your addons in fractional amounts with more than two decimal places or if you want to charge for fractional quantities, you can enable multi-decimal support.
   • Service Period: Select the time period that the charged service is to be accounted for. Specify the from and to dates/times of the period.
     • Chargebee considers this service period for the revenue recognition and deferred revenue reports.
     • Note: The time component can only be chosen when your site runs on millisecond-based billing mode.
   • Tax related fields as defined for the addons are displayed.
   • Click Add. You can click Add One-Time Addon to add more non-recurring addons as required.

6. You can click Add Coupon/Coupon Code to apply a coupon. (Multiple coupons of the same type can also be added. Contact support to avail this feature.)

7. Specify the PO number if required.

8. Under Invoice Notes, you can add additional information to be displayed to your customers on the invoice contextually. Invoice notes configured for Invoices in general, and those added for customer or subscription, non-recurring addon, if any, gets displayed here as well. You can remove some of these notes and add a new note as required. This note is displayed first in the invoice under Invoice Notes.

9. If the addon is a physical good to be shipped, you can add the shipping address details. You can choose to ship to the customer's billing address, or you can even add the shipping address details. Any existing shipping addresses available for the customer are also available for selection.

10. Click Preview and Send to preview the invoice, and click Create Invoice.

    

Classic UI users

Here's how the Add Addon, Add Charge and Add One-Time Charges and Addons option are displayed on the Action panel:

Here's how Add Addon configuration appears in the Change subscription page: