Usage and invoices

Two screens in the app answer the money questions, and they answer different ones. Usage is what this account has used in the period that is running now, and what that looks like it will cost. Invoices is what you have actually been charged. The first is an estimate; the second is the document your accountant wants.

Usage

The Usage screen shows the period being counted, what you have used against what your plan includes, where your talk time went, and the estimated cost so far.

The period is your billing period, not the month

If you have a subscription, the period on this screen runs between your own billing dates — the same dates that appear on your invoice. It is not the calendar month, and for most accounts it does not line up with one. A customer billed on the 14th who compares this screen against a calendar month will find calls apparently missing, and they are not: they are in the previous period.

On the free plan there is no subscription and therefore no billing date, so the period is the calendar month. The screen says which of the two you are looking at.

Used against included

Four things are counted, and two of them do not work like the first two:

• Answered calls. A call somebody picked up and talked on for at least ten seconds, and that our spam scoring did not flag. A hang-up, a wrong number and a robocall are not counted and not billed — so this is a count of conversations, not of rings.
• Tracking numbers. The numbers this account holds right now, not a count of events. Release a number and the figure drops immediately.
• Alert emails. One for every email an alert rule actually sent. A test message, a simulation and a send that failed are not counted. The allowance is per billing month like answered calls, but the overage is priced per thousand rather than per email — and a part-used block of a thousand is charged as a whole one. Nothing is refused when you pass the allowance: the alerts keep going out and the extra appears on the invoice. This row is absent entirely on an older deployment that does not meter them, rather than showing you a zero nobody measured.
• Chargeable talk time. A call is charged as one answered call however long it runs, up to the minutes included with each call on your plan. Past that, the excess is metered by the second. The figure on this row is only that excess, not your total talk time — a period in which every call finished inside its allowance shows nothing here, and that is correct rather than missing data. The minutes are an allowance per call, not a pool for the month, so there is no bar to fill.

Where your plan includes none of something, the screen says so rather than drawing an empty bar. That is the honest answer on the free plan, which includes no tracking number at all — and with no number there is nothing for the tag to swap in, so there are no calls to count, nothing to record and nothing for an alert to fire on.

Where the calls were forwarded

Chargeable talk time is priced by where the call was sent, because that is where our own cost differs: a landline, an 03 number and a mobile are three different rates. The breakdown on this screen is the same split that appears on your invoice, one line per destination — a single blended figure would add up correctly and be impossible to check. Like the row above it, it counts only the time past each call's included minutes, so an account whose calls are all short has an empty breakdown and a correct one.

It is worth reading if your forwarding number is a mobile. Pointing the same calls at a landline is the one lever on this screen that changes what you pay without changing anything you do.

The estimate

The panel at the bottom adds your plan's base charge to the usage above your allowance so far. It carries the time it was worked out, because it is a live figure rather than a stored one, and it is before VAT.

On the free plan the base is £0, and the screen says so plainly rather than showing a blank. Going above the free allowances is not something you can be charged for either: there is no number overage on free at any price, so there is nothing to price.

Where a figure cannot be shown to you — because your role does not include seeing money — the screen says hidden. It never shows a zero in place of a figure it is not allowed to show, because a zero is a real and different answer.

Invoices

Every invoice raised on the account, newest first, with its number, the period it covers, its status and its total. The most recent 24 are listed; ask us if you need one older than that.

The four statuses

• Paid — settled. Nothing to do.
• Due — raised and not yet paid. Usually this is simply an invoice that has not come round yet. The outstanding amount is shown under the badge, because a partly paid invoice has a total and a balance and they are different numbers.
• Cancelled — voided. Nothing is owed on it and it is kept for your records.
• Unpaid — we tried to collect and stopped trying. This one needs attention: the card on the account almost certainly needs replacing, which is done on the Plans screen.

Draft invoices do not appear. Stripe has not finalised them, there is no document behind them, and a row with nothing to open is worse than no row.

The document is Stripe's

Next invoice

When there is a subscription, a Next invoice panel shows Stripe's preview of it with its line items. It is a preview and not a bill: anything you use between now and the renewal is added to it, and VAT is applied when it is actually raised. Its figure moving between two visits is the panel working, not an error.

What you need to see these

The two screens need different permissions, on purpose. Usage needs the usage permission — the same one that lets a screen tell you what your plan includes, and most roles hold it. Invoices needs the billing permission, which account administrators and the billing contact hold and marketers do not: an invoice carries the company's billing address and the last four digits of the card, and the page it links to can take a payment, so it is not something a role gets for being able to read a usage bar. A role that cannot see one of these pages is a configuration rather than a fault. Each screen says so in as many words rather than reporting an error, and an account administrator can grant either from Team.

Empty screens, and what each one means

• "There is nothing to invoice yet" — this account has never had a card or a subscription. That is the free plan, and it is the expected state rather than a missing list.
• "No invoices yet" — there is a subscription and the first invoice has not been raised. It appears here, and is emailed to your billing contact, as soon as it is.
• "Your role cannot see invoices" — they exist and you may not read them. See above.

The three are kept apart on purpose. Collapsing them into one "nothing here" would tell somebody their invoices do not exist when what has actually happened is that they cannot see them.

The rates behind all of this — what each plan includes and what going over costs — are on What each plan includes.