Stream Data from your Application to Chargify for Billing and Analysis

It’s easier than ever to send data from your application to Chargify Business Intelligence for custom analysis. With this information, you can hone in on how your users are consuming your product and identify key value metrics. Then, leverage this data to build complex, multi-attribute pricing models that charge your customers for the exact value they receive. 

Take a Data Ingestion Tool for example, with Events-Based Billing, they can charge different rates based on: Cloud Provider, Data Center Region, Cluster Type, and Availability.

Data Read Event Rate per GB:

Segment
Cloud Provider
Data Center Region
Cluster Type
Availability
Segment Rate
1AWSUS East N VirginiaBasicSingle Zone$0.0001/GB
2Microsoft AzureWest EuropeStandardMulti Zone$0.0009/GB
3Google CloudAPAC SydneyStandardMulti Zone$0.001/GB

To start streaming your data to Chargify, head to Business Intelligence and select ‘Manage Data Sources’. From there, you will be asked to define your new data source. You can follow this guide to start streaming your data in. 

For more information on Chargify Business Intelligence, see our documentation here>

Include Avalara Sales Tax When Creating Price Points

The tax landscape for recurring revenue businesses can oftentimes be difficult to manage, leading to confusion on how to effectively apply taxes to your products and services. Adding to that complexity is determining a final price for your product that includes tax so that your customers are only advertised and charged one single price.

Within Chargify, your Avalara Managed Sales Tax account helps eliminate the ongoing headaches in managing sales tax for your recurring revenue business. Adding to Chargify's native Avalara functionality, our Product Team was recently working on a beta feature with some of our customers. We are happy to announce that this new feature is now in general availability!  

You can now utilize a 'tax included' option when setting your final prices in your Product Catalog within the UI. For example, if you want the final price (with taxes included) to be $20 for one of your subscription offerings, you can choose the "Tax included in price?" when building out your price point. Your customer will be billed $20, and in turn you will be collecting your subscription base price + tax. 

For more information on Avalara Managed Sales Tax, see our documentation for products here and for components here>

Immediately Charge Existing Payment Method on Ad-Hoc Invoices

In a customer-centric world, selling add-ons, services, or products outside of your recurring subscriptions can become a common practice. Because of this, we love knowing that our customers can take advantage of ad-hoc (one-off) invoices, either within the UI or API. Our Billing Team has released several enhancements to one-off invoicing over the past several months, from backdating functionality, new filtering options (via API), and a date selector modal. 

Today, we are excited to announce that you now have the option to immediately collect payment on these ad-hoc invoices. Two options are available when creating an ad-hoc invoice in the UI: 

  1. The invoice will be marked for remittance payment; or 
  2. The invoice amount will be collected automatically from the payment method on file 


In addition, users can select the desired behavior if payment fails. The ad-hoc invoice can either: 

  1. Roll back (not be created); or
  2. The status can be set to 'Open' and Chargify will attempt collection at the next scheduled renewal 

The default behavior can be set in your Site Settings. However, behavior for individual and ad-hoc invoices can be overridden. Payment instructions can be sent via API with the payment_instrucions parameter. If payment instructions are not specified, the settings for the invoice will default to the site settings.

For more information, see our ad-hoc invoice documentation or API documentation here>

Ad-hoc Invoice Date Selector Modal

At times you may be selling additional services and add-ons to your customers that are outside of their recurring subscriptions. With Chargify's ad-hoc invoice feature, you can easily create those additional charges with the option of backdating the creation date. 

We are happy to announce that we have added an intuitive date selector modal for how the Issue Date, Due Date, and Net Terms interact within the UI. You can now: 

  • Enter dates directly by keeping Net Terms equal to 'Calculate from Dates' 
  • Set Net Terms first (changing either date will dynamically change the other)  

For more information on Invoices at Chargify, see our documentation here>

Introducing Dashboard Theming for Business Intelligence

Dashboards that are easy to understand and consistent with your branding allow you to seamlessly convey the value you provide to your end users. We are thrilled to announce the release of advanced theming capabilities for your dashboards, allowing you to easily control the look and feel of your dashboards.Whether you are running business reviews with key clients or embedding metrics for a strategic partner, you can now provide a more cohesive experience for dashboards that are shared or embedded  outside of Chargify BI. 

Our Dashboard Theming feature has three main categories: General, Chart Elements and Visualization Types. You can access this functionality in Dashboard Edit mode from the top, right ‘Theming’ button. 

Dashboard Theming 

  • The General tab  allows you to select the overall data color palette that you want to apply to your dashboard. Here, you are also  able to set the background color, fonts, and space between your chart elements.
  • On the Chart Elements tab you can set the text font, color, and size for your chart titles, subtitles, legends, labels, grids, X- and Y-Axis, as well as tooltips. 
  • The look and feel of each Visualization Type (Line & Aera, Pie & Donut, Funnel, Metric, Table) can be defined on the last Theming tab. This includes things like line thickness, values style, labels, and colors. 

Dashboard Theming - General

Dashboard Theming - Chart Elements

Dashboard Theming - Visualization Types

Business Intelligence is included on all 2021 public plans. To request access or discuss adding BI to your plan, please reach out to us at support@chargify.com 

For more information on Business Intelligence Dashboards, see our documentation here>

Specify Invoice Recipients from the Admin UI

We understand that some of your customers need to have multiple recipients of an invoice for increased visibility amongst teams. We are excited to announce that you now have the ability to specify additional recipients when sending invoices from the Admin UI. 

Prior to this update, clicking the 'Send Invoice' button would automatically send the invoice to the primary contact on the account. Now, the UI will prompt the user with a modal which will be pre-populated with the primary contact, and additional contacts can be added on the To:, CC:, and BCC: fields. 

For more information on invoices in Chargify, see our documentation here>

Business Intelligence: Widget Naming and Filter Enhancements

Giving your stakeholders an easy way to interact with your dashboards empowers them to better understand the data and make impactful decisions across the organization. Our Product Team is continually working on enhancing charting functionality within Chargify Business Intelligence. 

We are excited to announce three new additions to dashboard settings, the ability to name your filters and date pickers, and an easy way for users to clear all dashboard filters. 

Naming Your Filters
We have added the option to name the filters on your dashboards. This will make it easier for users to know exactly how the filter will impact the connected charts.

Naming Dashboard Filters


Naming Your Date Pickers
We have added the option to name the date pickers on your dashboards. This will make it easier for users to know exactly how and where the selected date range will impact the connected charts.

Naming Dashboard Date Pickers


Clearing All Filters on a Dashboard  
We have made it easier for users to clear all selected filters on a dashboard with a single click.

Clearing Filters on a Dashboard

For more information on Business Intelligence, see our documentation here>

Service Credits in Billing Portal

Chargify's billing portal provides a convenient interface for your customers to update their credit card and billing details, change plans and number of addons, as well as cancel their subscription. Best of all, modifying what actions are available for your customers can be done through the Chargify UI, all without having to write any code. 

To further enable your customers ability to manage their own accounts, we are excited to announce new Service Credit and Prepayment balances to the billing portal view. Your customers will know exactly what balance already exists before an invoice is issued. 

For more information about the billing portal, see our documentation here>

Business Intelligence: Chart Enhancements

Understanding your data and communicating it clearly to your key stakeholders is crucial in making impactful decisions across the organization. Our Product Team is continually working on enhancing charting functionality within Chargify Business Intelligence. We are excited to announce new chart settings, additional data handling, and some improvements to Heatmaps. 

Chart Settings
We have added additional settings options to our charts, so you can further customize how your data is presented. The settings available will depend on the visualization type that has been selected.

  • Legend - You now have the ability to turn the legend on and off as well as deciding its placement on the chart.
  • Grids - The vertical and horizontal grids can now be turned on and off.
  • Metric Chart title - The metric chart now also has titles and subtitles in line with all the other visualization types.

Chart Settings - Legend and Grids

Choropleth Chart
Support for US postal codes: You will now be able to see your MRR data by US state when you select the Choropleth visualization type. Visualizing your MRR data by country on a world map is also supported.

Heatmap Improvements
Support for negative values: It is now a lot easier to visualize negative values on a heatmap. This enables you to identify patterns by month across the MRR movement types.

Negative Values (Churn) on a Heat Map

Backdating Issue Date on Ad-hoc Invoices

We understand that charges can occur outside of a normal billing cycle and therefore provide the functionality for you to send ad-hoc or one-time invoices. Many customers utilize ad-hoc invoices to sell services or items on a non-recurring basis to their customer base. We are excited to announce that our Product Team has made some exciting developments to these types of invoices! You can now backdate ad-hoc invoices using both the UI and API. 

If performing this in the UI, you go under Subscriptions > Invoices > Create an Invoice. There is a new input field for Issue Date in the top right of the ad-hoc invoice within the UI. The issue date will be set by default to the current date. In order to back date the issue date, you will use the date selector functionality by clicking into the Issue Date input field.

Alternatively, you can also backdate the issue date via the API with the "Create an Invoice Endpoint". If no issue date parameter is passed, then the issue date will default to the current date. If you desire to back date, you can simply pass an issue_date parameter of any date in the past.

The primary use case for backdating ad-hoc invoices is when you experience a delay in issuing an ad-hoc invoice but would still like for the invoice to be due at the same time it would have been had there been no delay. As an example, one-off usage is incurred but not charged until 7 days later and you want the due_date to reflect your standard net terms of 15 days. In this case, you could back date the ad-hoc invoice to the day the usage was incurred and set the due_date to Day 15.

For more information on backdating the issue date on ad-hoc invoices, see our documentation here>

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