Sample Product Showcase

Please navigate through our documentation, knowing our product's essential subscription processes. Study our example that presents basic phrases related to Billwerk+ Transform.

Discover product definitions for each element presented in the diagram above.

You are running a service you want to provide to your customers. The requirements of your customers might be quite different, so you defined different sets of products, each set with a specific currency and tax rate. In billwerk, these sets are called Plan Groups. These Plan Groups are organized in Plans and Plan Variants. During integration, most of the time you will just have to deal with Plan Variants. These are the objects customers subscribe to. They allow the differentiation of contract terms, fees and other factors.

When a new customer subscribes to a Plan Variant a successful order process will basically generate a Customer and a Contract. The Customer object contains personal data like name and address. The Contract specifies the subscription details like subscribed plan variant, billing period, payment bearer, current balance, and others.

A customer might want to subscribe to several independent products. Each subscription will be represented by a separate Contract. Unless there is an initial trial period or the customer subscribed to a premium plan a subscription triggers an immediate billing. Recurring billing processes will then be triggered periodically based on the plan definition. In case of a trial period, initial and recurring billing processes will be shifted accordingly.

Within a subscription it might be possible for your customers to add additional products, services and features that can be billed per period or based on metered usage. In billwerk, these are the so-called Components. A Component can be assigned to a Plan Variant or added/removed independently. Components that are billed per period behave like an additional contract to the main one and can be added or canceled separately from the chosen plan variant. As mentioned, there can also be components a customer does not order explicitly and will instead be billed based on Metered Usage. This usage can be passed prior to a billing process.

During the lifetime of a subscription, it is usually possible for a customer to up- or downgrade to another Plan Variant. What concerns Components, they can be added or removed during up- or downgrade. A Contract keeps a history, which is represented by a list of Phases. Each Phase has a start date and usually references a Plan Variant. Up- and downgrading creates a new Phase that references the selected Plan Variant.