General product settings

You can find this section in HostBill Admin → Settings → Products & Services → Your Order Page → Add new product → General

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General product settings

General product settings may vary depending on the order type chosen in the order page. Usually following options are available:

• Name - For each newly added product you need to provide its name.

• Product code - Optionally you can add product code - this code is visible only for you (it's not displayed anywhere in the client area). It doesn't have to be unique - few products can have the same code.

• Product features - In some cases you can list product features

• Price - Set the price for the product (see more in the Billing options section below)

• Tax - Choose if you want HostBill to automatically tax the product. You can read more about taxes in the related article.

• Tags - Products can have tags assigned to them for easier identification

Billing options

Each product can be free (no payment required) or have one-off (paid once) or recurring price (regular) or have metered billing enabled.

One-off payment (paid Once)

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For the one-off payment you can set the price and optionally the setup fee - an additional charge that covers the cost of setting up an account. Both are paid once - upon the purchase.

Regular payment

Regular pricing is for recurring payments that can be billed on daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually or biennially basis.

The monthly price can be set to 0.00 - the price for such products will be defined by components - through Forms, provided that the Components have enabled pricing options.

Apart from the billing period, you can set the billing type:

• Pre-paid - the invoice is issued at the beginning of billing period. All upgrades and addons are charged immediately

• Post-paid - the invoice is issued at the end of billing period. Upgrade charges are added to service's next invoice

• Hybrid - the mix of the two above: the invoice is issued at the start of billing period but the upgrade charges are added to service’s next invoice

Additionally you can charge:

• Setup fee - additional charge that covers the cost of setting up an account 

• Upgrade fee - additional fee paid once, upon the service upgrade or downgrade. It can be used if the upgrade requires the admin to take any action

Metered billing

Metered billing is a type of usage-based billing, where the fee is based on resource usage over time. Metered billing can be enabled by modules that automatically support this feature and had a range of variables that can be measured. Alternatively, HostBill users may define their own variables for any product or service, regardless of the provisioning module used, and add resource usage values using API.

To add a new variable enter:

• Name - name displayed for clients

• Unit - units measured 

• Variable - variable name

• Don't accumulate - when this option is enabled, previous readouts within given billing cycle would not accumulate. This will cause only the last readout to be billed.

• Reset each period - when enabled, HostBill will remove data from previous variable values for given account during invoice generation

• Price brackets - you can add multiple price brackets, enter Starting quantity, Ending Quantity and Unit price.

There are also multiple pricing schemes available:

• Tiered scheme - every unit charge is calculated with its measurement based on its own tier. Example: 1-2: $1, 3-4: $2, qtys are 1,3; charge: 1*$1 + 3*$2

• Overage tiers - use this scheme as tiered, where each expected measurement is low (ie. hourly bandwidth). Example: 0-100: $0, 101-150: $1, up to 100: free, everything above 100: $1 per unit. Total of 102 measured will cost $2.

• Volume scheme - all units charge is calculated based on total count in period and related bracket. Example: 1-2: $1, 3-4: $2, qtys are 1,3; charge:4*$2

• Peak scheme - only the highest measurement is billed. Charge is calculated based on the related bracket. Example: 1-2: $1, 3-4: $2, qtys are 1,3,5; charge: 5*$2

• Stairstep scheme - total cost is calculated based on price bracket, charge is for entire bracket, not certain units. Example: 1-5: $1, 6-10: $2, qty: 7, charge: $2.

With metered billing you can also:

• Choose the billing cycle - decide how often the invoices should be generated

• Add setup fee

• Add fixed recurring fee - additional, fixed amount, recurring charge for service.

Price changes

If you wish to update the price or add new options you can apply the new pricing to all existing accounts without the need of bulk update. HostBill will recalculate the price the recurring price of all accounts using this product and its components, but you will have the opportunity to provide the list of account IDs that should not be updated and should keep the previous price. HostBill will then search and list all found and updated accounts.

You can choose to perform Dry Run before updating the prices. The results will list all the accounts impacted by the price change, show the price difference and calculate the percentage of the change.

Tax product

This option lets you decide whether or not tax this product. If yes, you can assign this product to a certain tax group, with certain tax settings (read more about tax groups in this article.)

Hide product

If you enable this option the product will not be visible for your customers and available to buy only with using Direct cart link visible in top right hand corner of product configuration. This can help you if you want to make certain products available only to selected customers.

Archive product

If the product is archived it is not available in listings and can't be purchased. You can restore the product at any time.

Export & Import product

Export product option will let you export all product details into the json file.You can later use this product configuration in other order page by clicking Import product button and uploading the file.

Change order page

Allows you to change previously configured order page.

Enable stock control

Stock control

Allows you to keep track of the stock making sure that the correct level of stock is maintained. Here you can enter the quantity in Stock and monitor quantity used.

Optionally you can choose to return items to stock when service is terminated.

You can also enable notifications and notify staff about low stock when the number of items drops below defined number.

When out of stock

This option allows you to decide what to do with out of stock product (on per product basis):

• Follow general settings for visibility

• Hide product from orderpage

• Show product on orderpage without the ability to order

Enable Quantity-based products

With QTY-based Services enabled in Product Settings, order of N-times of this service by staff will result in creating a single service with multiplied quantity, instead of multiple accounts. In related accounts, a QTY field will be displayed, allowing to define the quantity of given product/service. When the invoice is generated, the recurring amount will be multiplied by product quantity and all of this will be reflected on the invoice

Enable pro-rata billing

If you'd like to bill customers on the same day of the month/year/quarter, then the Pro-rata billing is for you. With this option enabled you can charge a prorata'd amount at the initial time of order.

Following configuration option are available:

Prorata day - set the day of the month you'd like to have your invoices generated on, for example '1' will generate invoices for Monthly cycle every 1st day of month

Prorata month (for annual cycle) - set the month for Annual billing cycle on which invoices should be issued, for example. 'January' - customer invoice will be issued on January, (day to be set in ProRata day). Choosing "Disabled, try to bill for entire cycle" under this option will issue annual invoices on month that customer purchased service, for example if customer purchased Annual package on February, he/she will get next invoice exactly on February next year.

Charge Next Month after - set the day in month after which customer will be charged for entire next month during purchase, for example if set  to '15' and customer purchased service on 17th of month - he/she will be charged for remaining days in the current month + entire next month. To disable this feature set its value to "0"

Enable time-based validation

This option lets you control which period of time given product will be available for. You can setup both start and stop date.

Bulk update products

The products you add may be updated in bulk. You can:

• update prices

• update tags

• update client functions

for a number of products with one click. Simply click on Bulk update button at the bottom of the order page, choose the action you want to perform, select the products and configure the options.

For price update you can choose if you to increase or decrease the price by a fixed amount or a percentage and if you want to apply it to the recurring price or to the setup fee. You can also choose to set a completely new price.

For tags update you can choose which tags you want to add to and/or remove from selected products.

For client functions update you can choose which options you want to enable/disable for your customers for selected products.