Billing overview
Understand how Billing connects customer accounts to frozen contract terms, controlled discounts, and contract lifecycle actions.
Billing turns a published Products plan into a customer-specific commercial contract. A billing account identifies the customer and invoicing preferences. A contract selects the selling entity and snapshots the chosen plan version’s charges so later catalog changes cannot silently rewrite agreed terms.
Billing must be enabled for the organization or your account. Organization members can view Billing; organization administrators manage accounts, contracts, lifecycle actions, and discounts.
Billing structure
| Record | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Billing account | One customer entity’s account name, billing email, language, and payment terms. |
| Contract | The seller, customer, published plan version, currency, jurisdiction, dates, billing period, proration, suspension policy, and lifecycle state. |
| Contract line | A frozen snapshot of one charge and price point from the selected plan version. |
| Discount | A scoped pricing override with duration, optional reason, and separate grant and approval evidence. |
There can be one billing account for a given customer entity in an organization. The customer entity is fixed after account creation. Contracts always bill that account’s customer.
Frozen commercial terms
The contract wizard selects a published plan version and resolves its price points for the chosen jurisdiction and currency. Creating the contract copies those terms into contract lines. The result is Draft, and nothing is billed until an authorized administrator activates it.
This snapshot boundary is intentional. Publishing a new Products version does not change active contracts. The domain model can preserve a prior contract as Superseded when a successor activates, but the current customer UI has no control to create that successor.
Discounts require two people
Billing supports Percentage, Fixed amount, Rate override, and Waiver discounts. A discount can be evergreen, date-bound, apply for the first number of periods, or last until renewal.
The person who grants a discount cannot approve it. Until another authorized person selects Approve, the discount shows Awaiting approval — not rated yet. Approved discount evidence remains part of the contract history.
Discount controls are not currently restricted by contract lifecycle state. The public procedure therefore grants and approves them on Draft contracts; an administrator should not infer that a later-state discount change is safe merely because the control is visible.
Contract lifecycle
Contracts progress through Draft, Active, Suspended, Terminated, or Superseded. Activation begins from the configured Billing start date. Suspension pauses progression; On resume after suspension determines whether frozen periods are back-billed or forgiven. Terminated and superseded contracts do not return to active service.
Browser state
The Billing accounts, Contracts, and Lines lists use Entity Browser state. URL-backed search, filters, and sorting are distinct from personal display preferences. Contract transitions and discount decisions remain explicit server-authorized commands, not changes to the browser view.