Plans are more than a price: five ways to use them

Pricing Bands and Pricing Tiers

A Recurring Item's Quantity Basis can be set to Band (flat price by client size) instead of a per-unit count, and a Pricing Tiers card lets one line carry a second rate for whatever the client's Exemptions page assigns to it.

A plan needs to price by client size instead of a straight per-unit count, or needs one rate for most things and a different rate for a few.

Duplicate plan

Duplicate plan clones a plan's name, pricing, item list and pricing bands into a new plan with no clients subscribed yet; discounts and existing subscriptions are not copied.

A new plan is really a variant of an existing one, and retyping every line from scratch would just reproduce it with room for typos.

Prorate first bill immediately

This plan-level switch decides whether a subscription that starts mid-cycle bills a prorated first invoice on its start date, or waits unbilled until the plan's normal cycle date.

A client is starting mid-month and the plan needs to decide, once, whether that partial first stretch gets charged.

What is the Pricing Bands card for?

It prices the WHOLE plan by a count rather than per unit: "from this many technicians, the plan costs this much a month". Add a band for each price point and give it a starting count; the band claims every count from there up to the next band's start. A plan only actually bills by band once one of its price items uses the Band basis - the bands are the price list, that item is what puts them on an invoice.

What happens above my highest band?

That depends on whether you give the top band an ending count. Leave it blank and the top band is open-ended: every count above its start is billed at that price. Fill it in and the band table CLOSES there - a client above that count has no price at all, and every surface refuses out loud rather than quietly billing them the top band's rate: assignment, the monthly evaluation, invoice generation, and the client's own billing card. That is deliberate, and it is how you make large sizes quoted instead of listed. The client's existing band keeps billing correctly meanwhile; what you owe them is a quote, not a fix.

Why was my band table rejected?

Bands have to cover every count with exactly one band, so the card refuses three shapes: a GAP (a band ends at 4 and the next starts at 8, leaving 5-7 unbilled), an OVERLAP (two bands claiming the same count, so which one prices it is ambiguous), and a table that does not start at the first count (a lowest band starting at 3 leaves clients with 1 or 2 unpriced). It also refuses a band with no price, or a zero or negative one - that is not a price. Each of these is a money bug, so it is refused when you save rather than discovered on the 1st of the month.

Can I change a band that clients are already on?

Not while they are on it. A client follows the bands of the plan they hold, so changing a band's price reprices every client sitting in it from their next invoice, and deleting a band leaves them pointing at a price that no longer exists. The card refuses both and names which clients are affected. To raise prices, publish a NEW plan with the new bands and move clients onto it as you agree the change with them - that keeps existing customers on what they signed up for, which is the whole point of a fixed price list. Adding a band, widening one, or editing a band nobody is on are all fine.

When does a client actually move between bands?

A client is billed at a stored band, not at their live count, and only one thing moves it: a monthly evaluation on the 1st that looks at the month just closed. The band for that month is the HIGHEST count reached during it, so someone hired on the 15th does not silently reprice an invoice that already went out. If the closed month peaked into a higher band, the difference is billed as a separate prorated catch-up covering the crossing day to month end, and the client moves up before that morning's regular invoice. Moving DOWN takes effect for future billing only - a month already billed at the higher band is not credited back.

What does "Duplicate plan" do?

It clones this plan - name, pricing, its full item/tier list, and its pricing bands - into a brand-new plan named "<Plan name> (Copy)" with no clients subscribed yet, so you can adjust the copy without touching clients already on the original. Discounts and client subscriptions are not copied - those belong to a client, not to the plan template. Find it in the ⋯ menu next to Save. It is not available on Pax8-managed plans, since those follow the distributor subscription rather than being hand-authored templates.

What does "Prorate first bill immediately" do?

It controls whether a plan that starts partway through a billing cycle bills a prorated first invoice, and when that first charge lands. It affects the amount, not only the timing. With it OFF (the default), the plan does not bill a prorated first period: regular billing simply begins on the plan's normal cycle date, and the partial stretch between the start date and that first cycle date is not billed. With it ON, the first invoice fires on the trial-end / start date and bills only the prorated amount for the remaining days of that first period; full periods then bill on the normal cycle thereafter. So the real difference is that partial first stretch: ON charges for it (prorated), OFF leaves it unbilled. Turn it on when a client starts mid-cycle (e.g. a trial converting to paid) and you want to charge them for their partial first period up front instead of starting them on the next full cycle for free.

What is invoice rollup?

Rollup merges lines from other plans onto one target invoice, so a client gets ONE bill instead of one per add-on. The target is the plan type flagged as the rollup target, which is Core on a fresh install. A Core invoice covers a date window on the Core plan's own cycle, not a single calendar month. Each merged line names its own period. So a Core line may read one month while an add-on line right below it reads the next. That is expected. See the answer on how a rolled up plan finds the right Core invoice for why. Rollup happens when invoices are made, not when you approve them. By the time an invoice reaches the queue, the merge is already done.

How do I turn rollup on for one plan?

Every non Core plan on a client has a Roll up to Core invoice switch. You find it under Client > Billing > Plans. On, and the nightly run merges that plan's lines onto whichever Core invoice window covers its period. Off, and the plan makes its own invoice. The switch is per plan, so a client can have some add-ons merged and others on their own. It is greyed out and forced off when the plan's category has Single invoice turned on. You set that on the plan categories table at Settings > Billing & Pricing > Plans & Pricing. A category rollup and a Core rollup cannot both apply. One plan cannot ride two combined invoices at once.

What does overriding a line's quantity basis do?

Each subscription line normally counts by its plan's quantity basis. The override picker on a line lets THIS client count it differently - switch an automated line to Manual to type a fixed number yourself, or point it at a different automated source instead, including a specific Microsoft 365 license (a SKU picker appears once you choose that option). It works both directions: an automated line can go Manual, and a Manual or plan-default line can be pointed at a different automated source. A line married to a distributor subscription (Pax8) can't be overridden - its quantity stays locked to what the distributor reports. Whichever basis you land on, the quantity itself only recalculates after you Save; the row shows "-" until then.