Billing, Subscriptions, and Credits Management

Overview#

Organisations need billing that is predictable for finance teams and accurate for operational teams. Some customers want subscription plans with clear monthly commitments. Others want credit packages for bursty AI, evidence, analytics, or integration workloads. Many need both. Billing, Subscriptions, and Credits Management brings the subscription catalogue, credit checkout, usage metering, and immutable transaction ledger into one governed administrative surface.

The module supports tenant-aware metering, catalogue-based subscription purchase, credit package checkout, low-balance controls, auto-topup, monthly usage summaries, and finance-ready audit history. Administrators can understand what was purchased, what was consumed, which tenant generated the usage, and which ledger movement explains the current balance.

Key Features#

• Credits-Based Billing: Organisations maintain a credit balance consumed as platform features are used. Credits provide a simple, predictable model with full transparency into exactly what drove each deduction.

• Subscription Catalogue: Administrators can choose subscription products from a governed catalogue, with plan name, billing cadence, currency, included allowances, and purchase status shown consistently.

• Credit Packages: Pre-defined packages carry bonus credit incentives on larger purchases. Each package displays the effective credit value and cost per credit, making it straightforward to select the most economical option.

• Credit Checkout: Credit purchases flow through a secure hosted checkout experience so payment handling remains outside operational workflows.

• AI Token Usage Tracking: Token-based billing for AI operations with per-model cost calculation. Track consumption by model type, operation, and user for complete cost visibility without manual reconciliation.

• Tenant Usage Metering: Metered tracking for platform resource consumption including compute, storage, bandwidth, AI processing, evidence processing, and data operations. Costs are calculated and attributed to the correct tenant with no manual reconciliation step.

• Auto-Topup: Configure automatic credit replenishment when the balance falls below a defined threshold, ensuring uninterrupted platform access without requiring administrators to monitor balances manually.

• Low-Balance Alerts: Receive notifications when the credit balance approaches the configured minimum, giving your team time to purchase additional credits before operations are affected.

• Monthly Usage Summaries: Aggregated reporting by month with breakdowns by usage type, quantities, and costs. Filter by organisation, year, and month to support internal chargebacks and financial reviews.

• Transaction History: A complete, immutable ledger of every credit movement, subscription purchase, usage deduction, refund, and manual adjustment, with full audit trail and user attribution.

Purchase Workflow#

1. Browse available subscription products or credit packages and select the option that fits the organisation.
2. Initiate checkout through the secure payment processor.
3. On successful payment, the subscription entitlement or credit balance is updated.
4. Usage events are metered against the tenant and reflected in monthly summaries.
5. All ledger movements are recorded with timestamps and user attribution for audit purposes.

Use Cases#

• Predictable budgeting with pre-purchased credit packages and configurable auto-topup to avoid service interruptions.
• Subscription procurement through a governed catalogue with clear product, cadence, and currency information.
• Cost allocation using monthly usage summaries broken down by usage type and resource for internal reporting.
• Usage monitoring with real-time balance checks and low-balance alerts to maintain operational continuity.
• Financial auditing with a complete, immutable transaction history covering every credit movement and its cause.
• Tenant chargeback for shared-service operators that need to attribute platform consumption to the right organisation.

Open Standards#

• OAuth 2.0 Bearer Token (RFC 6750): Administrative billing actions are protected by token-based authentication and role-aware authorisation.
• HMAC-SHA256 webhook verification: Incoming payment-event notifications are verified using signed payloads and timestamp windows to reduce replay risk.
• ISO 4217 currency codes: Currency values throughout the subscription and credits model conform to ISO 4217, ensuring interoperability with payment processors and financial reporting systems.
• ISO 8601 date and time format: All purchase timestamps, invoice issue/due dates, and usage-period boundaries are serialised in ISO 8601 format, maintaining consistent temporal representation across integration responses and audit records.
• JSON (RFC 8259): Payment notifications, catalogue metadata, and usage summaries can be represented as standards-compliant JSON.
• PSD2 / Strong Customer Authentication (EU 2015/2366, RTS 2018/389): Card payment flows can comply with PSD2 Strong Customer Authentication requirements, including 3-D Secure challenge flows for EU-issued cards.
• PCI DSS v4.0: Hosted payment handling and card-data minimisation reduce exposure to cardholder data while keeping finance records auditable.

Last Reviewed: 2026-06-26 Last Updated: 2026-06-26