One Customer, Multiple Subscriptions (again)
Hi Guys,
Our customer is a business having multiple locations which need
to be billed. Each location has Setup Fee, Monthly Recurring Fee
and tracked usage subject to included items and overage. All in
all, everything that cheddar getter provides us to configure a
pricing model fits in beautifully with our price modelling. We have
3 pricing plans and each location can pick the plan that is best
for them.
But of course, the problem is that our customer needs a
subscription for every location they will have.
After reading comments on the similar topic, i could make our model somehow clumsily fit on CG. First location gets the subscription plan and subsequent locations use tracked items to get their setup/monthly fees charged. But pro-ration would become a problem since locations could begin and end within the billing cycle of the first location. But more importantly, it becomes impossible for us to do per location usage based billing since each location has a tracked item and we wouldnt know which particular one to update in CG. This would lead us to do the required calculations on our end and update CG using the Arbitrary charge API. So we're kinda having to rely on creating arbitrary charges for Monthly Charges (due to possible pro-ration in the first month) and also for usage charges (because we wont know which bucket/tracked item to update per location). This makes us question if CG is a good fit for us.
It's such a pity because CG is so deceptively close to our model (It applies perfectly at the location level, but not at the customer level).
Do you have any plans to support Multiple Subscriptions on a customer in the future? Is this in your roadmap? Is there some trick to get this to work for us? I'd really like to get understand all our options at CG before giving up.
Your input would be highly appreciated.
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Marc Guyer on 11 Aug, 2011 08:18 PM
We would very much like to natively support multiple subscriptions per customer. However, it's not on the current roadmap. There are just too many other features ahead of it.
There actually is a workaround. You can use a unique customer record within CG for each location. Then, aggregate them on your side. One interesting side effect of this technique is that each location would be billed separately on a separate billing cycle. You could get them all on the same cycle by changing their bill dates (and possibly prorating).
2 Posted by Aditya Sanghi on 12 Aug, 2011 07:59 AM
Thanks for your answer Marc.
Just to understand the complete impact/implications of not having convergent billing -
Am I missing something else? I want to be clear that if go down this track of multiple customers per location, we are aware of the interactions and the work to be implemented on our end.
Cheers,
Aditya
Support Staff 3 Posted by Marc Guyer on 12 Aug, 2011 02:14 PM
Currently, yes but we have the capability of eliminating that requirement with some new development.
That is correct. However, we have on our todo list the ability to turn on/off individual notifications for individual customers.
The run from 1-n for each product account, not for each subscription.
Yes, if you need to prorate the addition of a new subscription.
That sounds like everything!
4 Posted by Aditya Sanghi on 15 Aug, 2011 11:20 AM
Thanks again Marc.
Can you provide us with some indication when support for Point 1 and 2 above would be available?
Cheers,
Aditya
Support Staff 5 Posted by Marc Guyer on 15 Aug, 2011 06:35 PM
Neither feature is on our short term dev roadmap so I can't give you an estimate. Those features are on our wish list at this point.
Dean closed this discussion on 16 Jan, 2013 09:30 PM.