Subscription Billing in SaaS Metric Reporting

Subscription Billing automates and manages customer subscriptions, ensuring accurate SaaS metrics for contract changes, renewals, upsells, downsells, and churn events. This article explains how Subscription Billing transactions are categorized for analytics, the scenarios that drive impact, and how renewals are handled.

How Subscription Terms are Defined

The subscription term is determined by the start and end dates defined on each subscription line.

Source Records

Data is pulled from subscriptions within the system.

Impact Categories for Subscription Billing

Subscription events are automatically categorized, affecting SaaS metrics in the following ways:

Impact Level

Impact Category

Impact Subcategory

Scenario or Example

How It's Triggered / Recognized

Contract

New

New Contract

New subscription line activation

Modification Type: New or Churn

Customer

New

New Customer

Transaction with earliest start date for a customer

-

Contract/Customer

Upsell

Price Increase

Price is increased on a subscription

Pricing Change Order / Scheduled price uplift

Contract

Upsell

Quantity Increase

Quantity is increased

Pricing Change Order / Scheduled quantity uplift

Customer

Upsell

Quantity Increase

Increase in quantity for same item across customer transactions

-

Contract

Upsell

Add-on

New line/item is activated

Activation Change Order / Co-termed subscription lines

Customer

Upsell

Add-on

New item added across customer transactions

-

Contract/Customer

Downsell

Price Decrease

Price or discount is decreased

Pricing Change Order / Scheduled price decrease

Contract

Downsell

Quantity Decrease

Quantity is decreased

Pricing Change Order / Scheduled quantity decrease

Customer

Downsell

Quantity Decrease

Decrease in quantity for item across customer transactions

-

Contract

Downsell

Item Removal

Subscription line is terminated

Termination Change Order

Customer

Downsell

Item Removal

Item removal across customer transactions

-

Contract

Churn

Contract Churn

Subscription is not renewed, or is terminated

Subscription term ends with no renewal or is terminated

Customer

Churn

Customer Churn

Transaction with latest end date for a customer

-

Contract/Customer

No Impact

Renewal

Subscription is renewed

Renewal Change Order or renewal link on subscription. Modification Type: Ignored

Contract/Customer

Other

Ignored

Subscription is suspended

Suspend Change Order. Modification Type: Ignored

Time-Based Pricing and Uplift

Scheduled upsell and downsell events (for price or quantity) are automatically categorized as upsells or downsells, depending on the direction of the change.

Manual Control

Users can manually adjust the impact category or subcategory on a subscription change order by changing the modification type, giving flexibility in reporting.

Renewal Handling

  • Automatic Renewal Assignment: Renewals are automatically linked based on the renewal field on the subscription.

  • User Control: The renewal linkage for subscriptions is system-controlled. You can't change it manually.

  • Ignored Scenarios: Subscription suspensions and other ignored modification types are excluded from impact reporting.

Related Topics

General Notices