Arrears vs Advance

You have the flexibility to define the nature of charges associated with your products or services. Specifically, you can determine whether a charge has to be paid in arrears (at the end of the period), or in advance (immediately on event ingestion).

Charges paid in arrears

Charges settled in arrears are invoiced at the end of the billing period, based on the actual usage during that period. This suits usage types like storage, API calls, or compute, where it is more practical to wait until the end of the period before billing. By default, all charges are billed in arrears.

Dashboard
API

Set a charge as invoiced in arrears from the user interface, where you can customize the invoice cadence.

Charge set to be billed in arrears in the plan editor — Define a charge paid in arrears

Set pay_in_advance to false on a charge to bill it in arrears:

    LAGO_URL="https://api.getlago.com"
    API_KEY="__YOUR_API_KEY__"

    curl --location --request POST "$LAGO_URL/api/v1/plans" \
    --header "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
    --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --data-raw '{
      "plan": {
        "name": "Premium",
        "code": "premium",
        "interval": "monthly",
        "description": "Premium plan for SMB companies",
        "amount_cents": 50000,
        "amount_currency": "USD",
        "trial_period": 0.0,
        "pay_in_advance": true,
        "bill_charges_monthly": true,
        "charges": [
          {
            "billable_metric_id": "1111_2222_3333_4444",
            "charge_model": "percentage",
            "pay_in_advance": false,
            "invoiceable": true,
            "min_amount_cents": 100,
            "properties": {
              "rate": "0.5",
              "fixed_amount": "1",
              "free_units_per_events": 3,
              "free_units_per_total_aggregation": null
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }'

Charges paid in advance

Charges paid in advance are invoiced immediately when usage changes. Use this when you need to bill a customer instantly for a usage-based action, such as adding a user seat or an integration.

Dashboard
API

Set a charge as invoiced in advance from the user interface, where you can customize the invoice cadence.

Charge set to be billed in advance in the plan editor — Define a charge paid in advance

Set pay_in_advance to true on a charge to bill it in advance. A charge billed in advance cannot carry a spending minimum, so leave min_amount_cents out or set it to 0:

LAGO_URL="https://api.getlago.com"
API_KEY="__YOUR_API_KEY__"

curl --location --request POST "$LAGO_URL/api/v1/plans" \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
  "plan": {
    "name": "Premium",
    "code": "premium",
    "interval": "monthly",
    "description": "Premium plan for SMB companies",
    "amount_cents": 50000,
    "amount_currency": "USD",
    "trial_period": 0.0,
    "pay_in_advance": true,
    "bill_charges_monthly": true,
    "charges": [
      {
        "billable_metric_id": "1111_2222_3333_4444",
        "charge_model": "percentage",
        "pay_in_advance": true,
        "invoiceable": true,
        "properties": {
          "rate": "0.5",
          "fixed_amount": "1",
          "free_units_per_events": 3,
          "free_units_per_total_aggregation": null
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}'

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Arrears vs Advance

Charges paid in arrears

Charges paid in advance

​Charges paid in arrears

​Charges paid in advance

Charges paid in arrears

Charges paid in advance