Charges paid in arrears

Charges paid in advance

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Usage-based charges can be either charged in advance or in arrears

Arrears vs Advance

Lago is an open-source software for metering and usage-based billing. It's the best alternative to Chargebee, Recurly or Stripe Billing for companies that need to handle complex billing logic.

Welcome to Lago

Why billing is a nightmare

Deploy Lago seamlessly on your infrastructure, compatible with both free and premium editions.

Overview

Docker is the easiest way to get started with the self-hosted version of Lago.

Docker

Tracking & Analytics

Versions update

Useful commands

Lago Cloud is the fully hosted version of our open-source billing API.

Lago Cloud

Billable metrics define how incoming events are aggregated in order to measure consumption.

Create billable metrics

Recurring vs metered

For more advanced calculations, you can use SQL custom expressions. These expressions are helpful when the aggregation results for a billable metric require complex calculations.

SQL Expressions

Lago aggregates your events in real time. You can add rounding rules to the final result.

Rounding

When setting up your pricing, you may want to filters events according to their property. To do so, you can create filters for your billable metric.

Filters

Delete billable metrics

If Billable metrics are made to measure customer usage, Plans are made to apply prices to this usage.

The plan model defines when and how much a customer is charged.

Plan model

Commitments

Progressive billing, also known as threshold billing, automatically triggers an invoice when a customer's cumulative usage reaches predefined thresholds. This method ensures that customers cannot exceed certain usage limits without ensuring payment is received, reducing the risk of unpaid services or fraud.

Progressive billing

Customer management

Customer metadata

Invoice a customer

The customer portal

Coupons allow you to offer discounts to your customers. When you apply a coupon to a customer,  its value will be deducted from their next subscription invoice(s).

Coupons

A subscription is created when a plan is assigned to a customer.  You can assign a plan to a customer at any time (i.e. when the customer record is created or later on).

Assign a plan to a customer

Customers have the flexibility to easily upgrade or downgrade their plan at any given moment.

Upgrades and downgrades

You can edit a subscription at any time, whether it's active or pending.

Edit a subscription

You can terminate a subscription at any time, whether it's active or pending.

Terminate a subscription

Add-ons are a useful feature that allows you to add a fixed charge that is not recurring to one-off invoices.  This can be used to apply one-time fees such as a setup fee, one-time payment, or customer success fee.

Create add-ons

One-off invoices allow you to bill immediately one or several add-ons to a customer.  This guide will show you how to create a one-off invoice for a specific customer using the add-ons.

Issue one-off invoices

This guide explains how Lago ingests usage-based events coming from your application.

Ingesting usage

By ingesting events, you can see them flowing in the Lago application by using the events list. It allows you to take a deeper look at ingested events and detect possible warnings.

Events list

Learn how to retrieve usage data for both current and past billing periods.

Retrieving usage

Here is a list of sources you can use to ingest usage data. Some of these sources are capable of handling up to 15,000 events per second with default settings.

Metering ingestion sources

Lago automatically generates invoices for each customer according to the plan model.

Fees

When generating invoices, you may need to apply vat or other taxes. By creating taxes and applying them to the organization or/and customers,  their invoices will be directly affected.

Taxes

Grace period

Net payment term

Download invoices

Invoice metadata

Void invoices

Lago enables you to filter invoices and export them as a simple or advanced CSV file, tailored to your needs.

Export invoices

Connect Lago to any payment providers by using native integrations or webhook messages.

Lago's native integration with GoCardless allows you to collect payments via direct debit.

GoCardless integration

Lago's native integration with Stripe allows you to collect payments automatically when new invoices are generated.

Stripe integration

Lago's native integration with Adyen allows you to collect payments automatically when new invoices are generated.

Adyen integration

Payment retries

Dunning refers to the process of communicating with customers to remind them of overdue invoices and attempt to recover the outstanding amounts.

Manual dunning

Automate how to communicate with your customers to remind them of overdue invoices and attempt to recover their overdue balance using dunning campaigns.

Automatic dunning

Credit notes

Since usage-based charges can be calculated at the end of the billing period, you often need to wait to collect payments. With prepaid credits, you can now unlock recurring revenue opportunities for pay-as-you-go pricing models.

Add and void credits, to the customer's wallet.

Top-up and void credits

Webhooks

Send automatic emails when issuing an invoice or any billing documents.

Emails

Overdue invoices

Gross revenue

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

Invoice collection

RBAC - Role Base Access Control

Single Sign-On (SSO)

SOC 2 Type 2

Entitlements

This step-by-step integration guide will help you get started with Lago.

Integration testing

Lago OpenAPI

Migration to v1.2.0

Lago API allows your application to push customer information and metrics (events) from your application to the billing application.

Getting started

This object represents an add-on, a one-time fee that can be applied on one-off invoices.

The add-on object

This endpoint is used to create an add-on that can be then attached to a one-off invoice.

Create an add-on

This endpoint is used to update an existing add-on.

Update an add-on

This endpoint is used to delete an existing add-on.

Delete an add-on

This endpoint is used to retrieve a specific add-on.

Retrieve an add-on

This endpoint is used to list all existing add-ons.

List all add-ons

Gross revenue is the sum of monthly `finalized` invoice payments and fees paid in advance that are not invoiceable. This total is calculated after deducting taxes and discounts.

Retrieve gross revenue

Retrieve MRR (monthly recurring revenue)

Reports a monthly analysis focused on the revenue generated from all usage-based fees. It exclusively accounts for revenue that has been formally invoiced. Importantly, this report does not include revenue related to the usage in the current billing period, limiting its scope to previously invoiced amounts.

Retrieve invoiced usage

Represents a monthly aggregation, detailing both the total count and the cumulative amount of invoices that have been marked as `finalized`. This report sorts invoices categorically based on their `payment_status`.

Retrieve invoice collection

Overdue balance is the total amount associated with overdue invoices (invoices with pending or failed payments which are past their due dates).

Retrieve overdue balance

This object represents a billable metric used to define how incoming events are aggregated in order to measure consumption.

The billable metric object

This endpoint creates a new billable metric representing a pricing component of your application.

Create a billable metric

This endpoint updates an existing billable metric representing a pricing component of your application.

Update a billable metric

This endpoint deletes an existing billable metric representing a pricing component of your application.

Delete a billable metric

This endpoint retrieves an existing billable metric that represents a pricing component of your application. The billable metric is identified by its unique code.

Retrieve a billable metric

This endpoint retrieves all existing billable metrics that represent pricing components of your application.

List all billable metrics

List all billable metric groups

This object represents a coupon used to applies discount on customer next invoices. This coupon can be applied to a customer with overriden values.

The coupon object

This endpoint is used to create a coupon that can be then attached to a customer to create a discount.

Create a coupon

This endpoint is used to update a coupon that can be then attached to a customer to create a discount.

Update a coupon

This endpoint is used to delete a coupon.

Delete a coupon

This endpoint is used to retrieve a specific coupon.

Retrieve a coupon

This endpoint is used to list all existing coupons.

List all coupons

This object represents a coupon applied to a customer. It can override the initial values of a coupon.

The applied coupon object

This endpoint is used to apply a specific coupon to a customer, before or during a subscription.

Apply a coupon

This endpoint is used to delete a specific coupon that has been applied to a customer.

Delete an applied coupon

This endpoint is used to list all applied coupons. You can filter by coupon status and by customer.

List all applied coupons

This object represents a credit note, used to refund or credit back a customer for a fee or an invoice.

The credit note object

Create a credit note

This endpoint downloads the PDF of an existing credit note.

Download a credit note

This endpoint updates an existing credit note.

Update a credit note

This endpoint voids the available credit linked to a specific credit note.

Void available credit

This endpoint retrieves an existing credit note.

Retrieve a credit note

This endpoint list all existing credit notes.

List all credit notes

This object represents the usage-based charges associated with one of your customers for a defined billing period. It allows you to monitor customer usage throughout the period.

The customer usage object

Retrieve real-time customer usage data for the current open billing period.

Retrieve current usage

Fetch historical customer usage data for closed billing periods.

Retrieve past usage

This object represents a customer of your business. It lets you create or update a customer, but also track usage and create invoices for the same customer.

The customer object

Create a customer

Update a customer

This endpoint regenerates the Payment Provider Checkout URL of a Customer.

Regenerate checkout URL

This endpoint deletes an existing customer.

Delete a customer

This endpoint retrieves an existing customer.

Retrieve a customer

This endpoint retrieves all existing customers.

List all customers

Retrieves an embeddable link for displaying a customer portal.

This endpoint allows you to fetch the URL that can be embedded to provide customers access to a dedicated portal

Introduction

Guides

Migration

Arrears vs Advance

Charges paid in arrears

Charges paid in advance

Introduction

Guides

Migration

​Charges paid in arrears

​Charges paid in advance

Charges paid in arrears

Charges paid in advance