One pattern we kept seeing while working on usage-based billing was commitment-style contracts.
Teams would sell deals with a minimum monthly spend, charge real usage against it, apply higher rates for overages, and then manually true-up shortfalls at invoicing. Most billing systems don’t model this cleanly, so it ends up as custom code or finance-side adjustments.
We added first-class support for commitments in Flexprice.io :
• Define a minimum spend per billing period • Apply an overage multiplier when usage exceeds it • Automatically true-up shortfalls if usage comes in below commitment
All of this is handled at the subscription and invoice level without manual reconciliation.
Curious how others here have implemented commitments or minimum guarantees in usage-based systems, and what edge cases we might be missing.
If you would like to jump in-depth, we also have a open-source community and would love to see you there: http://bit.ly/4huvkDm
Happy to answer questions.