Billing Intervals
How monthly, quarterly, and yearly billing works and when your customers get charged
Plans can be billed monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Even on quarterly and yearly plans, Commet checks for usage charges every month. Here's what your customers can expect.
Monthly Plans
Straightforward: your customer is billed every month for their plan base, extra usage, and extra seats.
Quarterly and Yearly Plans
Your customer pays the plan base every 3 or 12 months, but usage charges can happen every month. Here's how it works:
Example: Quarterly plan at $300/quarter
Month 1:
→ Your customer used extra API calls? They get a small invoice for just the overage.
→ No extra usage? No invoice at all.
Month 2:
→ Same thing — only charged if they had extra usage.
Month 3 (renewal month):
→ Full invoice: plan base ($300) + any extra usage + any extra seats.
→ Billing cycle resets for the next quarter.Usage resets every month, not every quarter or year. A customer on a quarterly plan with 10,000 included API calls gets 10,000 calls each month — they don't accumulate.
What Your Customer Sees
| Months between renewals | Renewal month | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan base | Not charged | Charged |
| Extra usage | Charged (if any) | Charged |
| Extra seats | Not charged | Charged |
| No extra usage at all | No invoice | Invoice (has plan base) |
Plan Changes Mid-Cycle
If your customer upgrades a quarterly or yearly plan mid-cycle, they get credit for the unused portion and start a new cycle from the change date. See Proration for the exact calculation.
Example
Your customer is on Plan A at $300/quarter (January 1 – April 1).
They upgrade to Plan B at $600/quarter on February 15.
→ They get credit for the unused portion of Plan A.
→ They're charged a prorated amount for Plan B.
→ Their new cycle starts February 15, next renewal May 15.Related
- Invoices — What invoices your customers receive and when
- Proration — How mid-cycle charges are calculated
- Plan Changes — Upgrades, downgrades, and switching
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