July 2022 - Limiting, invoicing, and pricing enhancements

Today, we're rolling out a slate of new features and improvements around limiting, invoicing, and pricing that we hope will make Octane even more effective.

Limits on Labels

Meters and their measurements can be have "labels". Labels signify additional information about a measurement. If you were measuring the number of trees a customer planted, you could use a label to indicate the species of the planted tree.

We recently added the ability to create fine-tuned limits in your price plans based on labels. Limits can now be set on the number of overall measurements received, the number of measurements with a specific label and value, and for any one value of a given label. Any of these limits can be set concurrently. Using our example, this means that you could make sure that no one species of tree is planted more than 10 times, that cedar trees aren't planted more than 5 times, and that no more than 100 trees are planted in total.

You can read more on label-based limits in our docs.

Invoices Page

Previously, invoices could only be managed on each customer's page. While this layout made it easy to take actions on a specific customer, it made it hard to get an overview of invoicing across a whole project. To help with this flow, we've added a new "Invoices" page. We've grouped invoices into two tabs: one for invoices that have already been generated, and one for upcoming invoices. Just like before, Invoices can still be managed directly on a customer's page. You can find the Invoices page in your sidebar, and you can read more on the invoicing process in our docs.

Price Plan Improvements

We also launched a number of improvements to make Price Plans even more flexible. At a high level, we allowed Add-ons to be billed once per subscription, we added invoice display names to Metered Components, and we allowed a plan's rase rate to be billed independently of the plan's billing cycle.

One-time Add-ons

In February, we rolled out Add-ons. Add-ons can be added to price plans, allowing subscribed customers to pay an additional flat fee to access a feature. To allow for more flexibility around billing for Add-ons, you can now charge for an Add-on once per billing cycle or once for the life of a subscription. For more details on Add-ons, check out our docs.

Metered Component Invoice Display Names

Metered Components associate a Meter with a Price Plan. By default, we use the Meter's name when creating Invoice line items for that Metered Component. You can now specify a display name for a Metered Component, making it easier to customize the line items of an invoice.

Base Rate Billing Frequency

Price Plans can include a flat base rate, typically charged once per billing cycle. You can now set the rate at which the base rate to be charged independently of the Price Plan's billing cycle. A Base Rate can be charged per month, quarter, half-year, or year, as long as it is at most as often as the plan's billing cycle.