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Configuration Workflow

The following steps summarize your configuration workflow in m3ter when setting up to apply usage-based or unit-based pricing to your product plans, attaching those priced plans to your customer accounts, and running bills for those accounts.

Step 1: Configure your Organization

• Configure Users for the people you want to grant access.

• Create and configure Service Users for the automated processes you want to grant access. You'll need to do this in preparation for setting up any Integrations in m3ter with your 3rd-party systems.

• Define the Timezone, Currencies, and Epochs for billing cycle dates.

Step 2: Create Products

• Products act as containers for Meters, Aggregations, Counters, Pricing, Plans, and Plan Templates.

• You typically create a Product before creating any of these child entities.

• Note that to meet your pricing requirements you might want to bundle or combine Products for consumption by your end customer - a single Account might consume several Products. For these cases, you can create global Meters, Aggregations, and Counters, which means they are not tied to a specific Product.

Step 3: Create Meters and Aggregations for Usage

• Create Meters with Data Fields and Derived Fields to collect usage data.

• Create Aggregations based on Meter fields to define your pricing metrics - the units of measurements you'll use when applying usage-based pricing to your Product plans.

Step 4: Create Counters for Recurring Charges

• Create Counter to apply unit-based pricing to Product Plans for recurring subscription charge rates on Accounts.

• Use the Counter to post Counter Adjustments to define specific unit quantities subscribed to be end-customer Accounts

Step 5: Create Plan Templates and Plans

• Use Plan Templates to define general billing attributes, such as currency, frequency and interval, and any minimum spend or standing charges to apply.

• Create Plans from Templates to inherit common billing attributes and pricing structures.

Step 6: Configure Pricing for Plans

• In the Pricing Editor:

  • Add Aggregations to Plans or Plan Templates and create usage-based pricing for your Products.

  • Add Counter to Plans or Plan Templates and create unit-based pricing for your Products.

• Price up Plan Templates for common pricing structures to save repeat configuration work when pricing Plans.

Step 7: Set up Accounts

• Create Accounts for your customers who purchase one or more of your Products.

• Define any Child Accounts if you want billing for these Accounts to be rolled-up to a single Parent Account Bill.

Step : Attach Plans and Create Prepayments and Balances for Accounts

• Attach a pricing Plan to an Account for each of your Products consumed by the Account.

• Select start and end dates to define the active period of the pricing Plan for the Account.

• If required, create any Prepayments/Commitments and Balances agreed by customers for an Account.

Step 9: Submit Test Usage Data via Console

• Usage data:

  • Open the Details page for the Meter used to collect usage data on which the pricing Plans attached to an Account are based.

  • For a given Account code, manually enter some test values for the Meter's Data Fields.

  • Send the test usage data into the m3ter Ingest API using the Submit Measurements call.

• Recurring Charges Data:

  • Open the Counter Adjustments tab for an Account with a Plan attached that is priced using a Counter.

  • Create Counter Adjustments for the Account to define the Counter quantity the Account has subscribed to.

Step 10: Run Bills

• Select Bill Frequency and Billing Period End.

• Enter the Account for which you have submitted test usage data and run Bills for the Account.

• Open the generated Bill in Bill Management to check the charge amounts. Bills are based on:

  • The aggregated test usage data you have submitted for a Meter.

  • The Counter quantities subscribed to on an Account.

Next: Worked Examples

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