Arrears vs Advance

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

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

If you opt for charges to be settled in arrears, they will be invoiced at the end of the billing period based on the actual usage during that period. This payment option is ideal for 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 configured to be billed in arrears.

Dashboard

You can easily manage this billing settings through the user interface. Within the UI, you will find options to customize the invoice cadence by setting a charge as invoiced in arrears.

API

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

Define a charge as paid 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

With this payment option, charges are invoiced immediately upon any changes in usage. It is particularly useful for scenarios where you need to bill customers instantly for usage-based actions, such as new user seat or integrations.

Dashboard

You can easily manage this billing settings through the user interface. Within the UI, you will find options to customize the invoice cadence by setting a charge as invoiced in advance.

API

Define pay_in_advance : true on a charge to bill it in advance:

Define a charge as paid in advance

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,
        "min_amount_cents": 100,
        "properties": {
          "rate": "0.5",
          "fixed_amount": "1",
          "free_units_per_events": 3,
          "free_units_per_total_aggregation": null
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}'