Understanding and Creating Counter Adjustments for Accounts
When you've created a Counter to use for recurring subscription charges for your Product and used this Counter to price a Product Plan, you can attach the priced Plan to an end-customer Account that has signed up for your Product. You can then create Counter Adjustments against the Account for the number of Counter units the end-customer subscribes to.
This topic explains how the Recurring Charges feature in m3ter is designed to work using Counter Adjustments you make for end-customer Accounts throughout their contract service period. How to attach a Plan priced using a Counter to an Account and make Counter Adjustments to the Account is then explained:
Understanding Counter Adjustments for Accounts
The Recurring Charges feature in m3ter allows you to apply in a flexible way unit-based pricing for products, where end-customers who consume a product are charged on the basis of the number of units - such as seats or licenses - they have subscribed to for each billing period in their contract service period. Importantly, the number of units chargeable can fluctuate from one billing period to the next. This need to keep a precise track of the changing number of chargeable units across separate billing periods is met using Counter Adjustments.
For example, suppose you offer a product which you want to charge for based on the number of seats subscribed to within any given billing period, and at a flat rate of $2 per seat. Let's assume billing is on a monthly frequency and in a typical case you agree a yearly contract service period with end-customers. Here's an example of a series of Counter Adjustments across several billing periods to illustrate how fluctuations in subscribed seat numbers on an Account are tracked and billed for - note that prorating of any Counter charges is disabled for this example:
If a customer signs up for your product to run from June 1st 2024 until June 30th 2025, and commits to 15 seats for the first month, you can post a Counter Adjustment of 15 using your Seats Counter against their Account on June 1st 2024. The first Bill - dated July 1st 2024 - will charge this initial number of Seats as a Counter running total charge at 15 x $2 = $30:
If no further Counter Adjustments are posted on the Account in July 2024, the second Bill - for the July billing period and dated August 1st 2024 - will again charge for the 15 seats as a Counter running total charge at 15 x $2 = $30.
If however a Counter Adjustment of 18 seats is posted on the Account on July 20th 2024, the second Bill - for July billing period and dated August 1st 2024 - will charge for the 15 seats as a Counter running total charge at 15 x $2 = $30 and also will charge for the extra 3 seats as a Counter Adjustment debit at 3 x $2 = $6, bringing the total billed to $36:
With this single Counter Adjustment for the increase to 18 seats, for the start of the next billing period - August 1st 2024 - the Counter running total for the Account becomes 18.
If a Counter Adjustment is now posted on the Account on August 10th 2024 for a decrease in the number of seats to 12, the third Bill - for the August billing period and dated September 1st 2024 - will charge for the 18 seats as a Counter running total charge at 18 x $2 = $36 and also will apply a credit to the Account as a Counter Adjustment credit at 6 x $2 = -$12, bringing the total billed to $24:
If no other Counter Adjustments are posted on the Account for August, the Counter running total for the start of the next billing period - September 2024 - becomes 10.
In this way, three types of billing charge are used for the Counter Adjustments you post to Accounts - Counter running total charge, Counter adjustment debit, and Counter adjustment credit. This ensures any fluctuations in the number of units are accurately tracked and billed for across successive billing period throughout an end-customer's contract service period.
Counter Adjustments - Notes and Tips
There are some key points to note when working with Counter Adjustments:
Always use the absolute value for a Counter when posting Counter Adjustments on an Account. If the running total was 20, but you want to increase it to 25, enter 25 and do not attempt to enter the amount of variation - in this case plus 5. As seen above, the plus or minus for the new running total value will be tracked accurately.
You can enable prorating to be applied for how the Counter running total, Counter Adjustment debit, and Counter Adjustment credit charges are calculated. See Using Counters to Price Plans in the previous topic for details with examples on how prorating is applied to charges.
Counter Adjustments are supported down to a specific day of granularity - you cannot create more than one Counter Adjustment per day per Account for a Counter, and you will receive an error if you try to do this. If for a specific date you create a Counter Adjustment for an Account with the incorrect value, you must delete it and recreate it with the correct value.
Attaching Plans to Accounts and Creating Counter Adjustments
In the previous topic, we followed a seat-based pricing example and created a Premium Seats Counter for applying recurring charges for a Premium Seating Product. We then used the Counter to define a Tiered Counter Pricing for Premium Seats Plan 2.
To continue the example, we'll now attach Premium Seats Plan 2 to an Account and go on to create some Counter Adjustments on the Account using the Premium Seats Counter. This will leave us ready to generate some Bills for the Account for the period covering the Counter Adjustments and then review those Bills to confirm the seat-based charges are being calculated correctly:
In preparation for the current example, we've created an Account called Seats Account 2.
To Attach a Plan to an Account and create Counter Adjustments:
1. Select Accounts. The Accounts page opens.
2. Search for and then select the NAME hotlink text of the Account you want to attach the priced Plan to. The Account page opens with the Overview tab selected.
3. Select the Attached Plans tab.
4. Select Create Plan Attachment and attach the Plan you've priced using a Counter.
For the current example, we'll attach Premium Seats Plan 2:
Note we've selected dates for the Plan Attachment - for the period the Plan is active for the Account - that correspond with the period we defined for the Counter pricing to be applied to the Plan.
Warning: Parent/Child Billing!
Not supported for Counter charges on Bills. When you attach a Plan to an Account that has been priced using a Counter and is either a Parent or Child Account, then Parent/Child billing is not supported.
Hybrid Pricing? If you want to implement hybrid pricing you can attach a Plan to the Account that is priced using both an Aggregation for usage charges and Counter for recurring unit-based charges. However, for Parent/Child billing only the usage charges will be considered.
Tip: More on Attaching Plans to Accounts? See Attaching Plans to an Account.
5. Select the Counter Adjustments tab.
6. Select the Counter you want to use to make the Counter Adjustment on the Account.
For the current example, we'll select Premium Seats Counter.
7. Select Create Counter Adjustment. The Counter Adjustments>Create page opens.
8. Enter the Counter Adjustment Details:
Counter. Required and pre-selected.
Account. Required and pre-selected.
Date. Required.
Note that Counter Adjustments are supported down to a specific day of granularity - you cannot create more than one Counter Adjustment for any given day using the selected Counter and you'll receive an error if you try to do this.
Value. Required. The number of the selected Counter.
Important! Enter the new absolute value for the Counter for the selected date - if it was 15 and has increased to 20, enter 20; if it was 15 and has decreased to 10, enter 10. Do not enter the plus or minus value relative to the previous Counter value!
Purchase order number. Optional.
For the current example, we've assumed the customer Account we're creating the Counter Adjustment for has subscribed to 15 Premium Seats for the month of June 2024.
9. Select Create Counter Adjustment. You are returned to the Counter Adjustments tab where the new Adjustment is listed for the Account:
Note that an Adjustments totals chart shows on the tab allowing you to read off the running total value for the Counter Adjustments made against the Account using the selected Counter.
10. If your end-customer changes the number of units they want to subscribe to for the billing period, you can create a second Counter Adjustment:
For the current example, we'll suppose the end-customer has realized by mid-month they require 18 not 15 seats for June 2024, so we repeat Steps 8 and 9 to create a second Counter Adjustment dated June 15th for the Account:
Note that an Adjustments totals chart has updated for the new running total value for the selected Counter.
We now have an Account set up with a Product Plan attached which we priced using our example recurring charge Premium Seats Counter. Secondly, we've created Counter Adjustments against the Account for the Counter value the end-customer has subscribed to for a billing period - here a month. In the next topic, we'll run billing for that month and review the Bill generated to check that the recurring charges due on the Account have been correctly calculated.
Additional Support
Login to the Support portal for additional help and to send questions to our Support team.