Metered usage V1

Note: This topic is about Metered usage V1. Marketplaces use the metered usage V1 API, metered usage V2 API, or both, to support metered usage billing. See also: Metered usage V2.

AppDirect marketplaces support metered usage billing, also known as usage-based billing, which is how marketplaces or Developers charge users for their variable use of a product during each billing period. Developers configure metered usage through pricing settings for each product edition and add-on product. Typically, you use the unit that you set within the pricing settings to measure and charge for usage, for example each gigabyte, hour, or user license that a user uses.

When you enable metered usage pricing, AppDirect marketplaces expose an API endpoint that you can use to report usage to the marketplace that owns the user's (customer's) account. For example, you can report the number of gigabytes of storage that users use, and the marketplace charges them for it based on the preconfigured or custom price that you define per gigabyte.

You can report usage as often as necessary during a billing period, with one usage event per call. The marketplace adds all the usage that you send for the edition or add-on product unit type (such as gigabyte, hour, or user license), and invoices users for the total number of units, by unit type, on one invoice. All usage is attributed to and invoiced for the billing period in which you report it.

Although you can report usage for suspended and canceled subscriptions, the outcomes differ and some constraints exist:

Suspended subscriptions: When subscriptions are suspended, metered usage can still be submitted. If there is an active contract for the subscription, the submitted usage is invoiced with the next billing cycle. If there is not an active contract for the subscription, the submitted usage is included on the next invoice.
Canceled subscriptions: When a user cancels a subscription during the billing cycle, they are still invoiced on their scheduled invoice date. You can report usage until the end of the billing period during which the user cancels a subscription, to include it on the invoice.
Important: After the end of the final billing period, any attempts to report usage for a canceled subscription are rejected and not invoiced. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you report usage as soon as possible.

There are two types of metered usage, preconfigured and custom, and you can call the API for both of them. See Preconfigured and custom metered usage.