Use case
Each plan includes so much a month, and you handle what goes over
Customers get an allowance of API calls, exports or tokens each month. When they use it up, you block them, bill them or ask them to upgrade, and the count starts again next period.
What goes wrong
Where monthly allowances break
- 01
Overage nobody decided on
Usage runs past the allowance because nothing checks it before the work, or it is charged at the end of the month without anyone having chosen that.
- 02
Counters that drift from the plan
The counter resets on a different day from the subscription, or not at all, so what the customer used and what their plan allows stop matching.
- 03
One bad event holds up the rest
A malformed usage record fails a whole batch, and the good records in it are retried, dropped or counted late.
In ShipRev
Where this lives in ShipRev
Usage on the customer record
Your backend reports usage with the Server SDK. Events are recorded against the buyer organization, and an event that is refused is set aside without holding up the others.
Allowances that reset by period
Each allowance has a period, and the service resets it when the period ends. The period is kept on the same customer record as the subscription it comes from.
A policy for going over
Each capability carries one of three overage policies: allow and bill, block, or prompt an upgrade. The choice is made once for the capability, not by whichever check happens to run first.
A decision before the work
Your backend asks before doing the work and gets the decision with what is left of the allowance.
How to set it up
From usage event to allowance
Rule, do the work, then report
Ask for a ruling before the work and report what it used afterwards, with an ID that makes retries safe.
Report usageKnow how usage meets the allowance
Where an allowance comes from, how each event is counted against it, and when the period starts again.
Allowances and how usage is clearedRead where each customer stands
Read how much of each allowance is used, from your backend or across all your customers.
Read usageWhere it stands
What is built, and what is not
ShipRev is not open yet: the managed cloud is built but not yet open, and the source repository is not public.
Usage reporting
From the Server SDK for Node.js, with refused events set aside.
Reset by period
Allowances reset when their period ends.
Overage policies
Allow and bill, block, or prompt an upgrade, per capability.
Usage views for your team and your end users
A usage dashboard in the console and a usage page in the end-user portal are not available.
Event notifications to your systems
ShipRev does not send events to your systems, for example when an allowance runs out.