What’s New in m3ter: Summer 2023

Flowers are in full bloom and warm summer weather is finally here! But that's not the only treat this season has brought us - here are the newest features and enhancements in m3ter:

• Track and validate system changes with audit data
• Easily review and troubleshoot integrations
• AI-powered support assistant in the Console
• Chargebee integration enhancements
• Increased flexibility with billing
• Improved manual usage data submission

Read below for more details on each update and how you can maximize their value for your organization.

New Features:

Track and validate system changes with audit data

When you have multiple administrators or users in m3ter configuring the platform, running bills, or making modifications, it’s important to know which users made changes and when for security, easy troubleshooting, and streamlining operations. 

You can now audit and track changes to your organization in both the Console and API across all of the main m3ter entities - Meters, Accounts, Plans and more. This is a big step toward sharing full audit history, which we will be working toward for customers who require granular auditability.

• Console - When anything is new or changed it is logged and saved right on the entity in the UI with User details and the date for easy viewing.

• API - API responses now contain fields to let you know who created or updated what when. See the sample API response below:

{

"id": "c91a…,

…

"dtCreated": "2023-05-09T19:40:58.645Z",

"dtLastModified": "2023-06-08T09:13:55.216Z",

"createdBy": "USER_6f3…1,

"lastModifiedBy": "USER_6f31…"

}

Easily review and troubleshoot integrations

Integrations are an integral part of m3ter, and we want to make it easy to troubleshoot, validate, and manage on an ongoing basis. To continue improving this, we’ve added:

• Error Events: Any failure within integrations will be surfaced as an error in the Events tab within Integrations, including a suggestion and direct link to follow up and resolve the error within the platform. When resolved, you can mark Events as actioned and remove them from the page.
• URL Validation: Initial checks are now done on any URL added to a webhook to ensure it is correctly formed.

New AI powered support assistant in the Console

In-context troubleshooting and learning is the fastest way to get things done. This is why we’ve built a new AI-powered support assistant that lives right in the Console, to answer any question you have and quickly find the relevant topic as you work.

Log into your m3ter account today, and click the Help icon in the top left to test it out!

Enhancements across m3ter

Chargebee Integration:

Multi-Decimal and Non-Decimal Support

You can now choose and sync up to 16 decimal places on the final price calculated on customer bills, allowing you to maintain consistency and accuracy with bill precision between m3ter and Chargebee. Learn more here.

Sync Credits with Chargebee

For an outbound billing flow integration, negative bill line items can now be synchronized with credits in Chargebee.

Notifications:

Send Notifications for Event Occurrence

Notifications can now be triggered and sent based simply on an Event occurring, and with no other conditions having to be met. For example, if a Commitment has been updated, you can now send a notification on this simple update Event. When configuring Notification Rules, a handy “Always fire notification” switch is available.

Billing Enhancements: 

Statement Last Generated date

Compare the bill calculation timestamp against that of the Statement to determine if the statement also needs refreshing. You can also use these Statements to build a custom billing dashboard showing the change in bill amounts over time, providing a better way to manage billing operations.

Bill Accounts for Prepayment amounts directly

You no longer need to attach a Product Plan or Plan Group to an Account in order to add a Prepayment to the Account and set up billing for any outstanding Prepayment amount. You may want to leverage this functionality for short term agreements, where you can still track usage, but charge upfront using a Prepayment while negotiating the next phase of the customer journey.

Managing draw-downs on Balances and Prepayments

When setting up your m3ter organization, you can now define the order in which the billing draw-down is applied to any Prepayment or Balance credits amounts added to end-customer Accounts.

Improved manual usage data submission

Submit usage data multiple times for the same Account within the same pop-up modal. The measurement UID is automatically regenerated each time making ready for the next submission, and you can view a running log of successive submissions. This allows you to query back a measurement and will mostly be used for testing your configuration.

Inspiration & Insights from m3ter, our partners, and the community:

• Something Old, Something New: The History and Future of Pricing, m3ter
• Usage-Based Pricing: A Market Niche For Startup Tech Companies?, Forbes
• How to Align Your Teams for Pricing and Packaging Success, m3ter
• SaaS CFOs - how to recession-proof your tech stack, Diginomica
• 20 Solutions For Maximizing Revenue And Profitability, Forbes
• New! m3ter blog series for Product teams

Check out our Changelog for a running list of feature releases.