Products

A Product is anything that can be sold.

The most common types of Product are Subscription, Onetime, and Usage.

Product Type	Description	Example
Subscription	Billed on recurring basis	Users of SaaS product priced at $x / user / month
Onetime	Billed once	Implementation fee for SaaS product
Usage	Billed based on # of units used	$x.xx per API call

A Product has the following properties:

Product Type - this could be one of the following types:
- Subscription - Product for which the pricing has a time associated with it i.e., per month, per quarter etc., We currently support the following time intervals - month, quarter, semi-annual and annual. Subscriptions are typically billed in Advance (i.e., the beginning of the billing period) but we also support the ability to charge subscriptions on an Arrears basis (i.e., the end of the billing period).
- One-time - Product for which there is no time associated with it and is paid upfront.
- Usage - Product for which the amount to pay is decided based on how much of the product is consumed. Usage is always billed in Arrears. Currently, MonetizeNow supports usage billing on a monthly basis which is the predominant use case for Usage Billing. We are adding support for extending the frequency to quarterly, semi-annually and annually. Again, the best practice for Usage Billing is monthly billing frequency.
- Minimum Commit - Product that is used solely in the context of Usage Billing. It defines the minimum spend across one or more Usage products. We will discuss more about it in the Usage Billing section.
- Pre-paid Credits - Pre-paid credits are also typically used in the case of Usage Billing in which a customer is willing to make an upfront payment in exchange for getting better discounts on the usage pricing. This payment is a credit from which the drawdown happens as usage is incurred. Whenever the pre-pad credits are depleted, a non-zero Invoice is created.
SKU - an identifier used to identify this particular product
Custom ID - a custom identifier that represents this particular product. It could be an ID from an external system where you maintain the list of products.

It is important to note that while defining a Product, you are not attaching a price to it. It will be done later. This is a core feature of our Product Catalog that avoids SKU proliferation.