Basics & Definitions
You and Your Customers
We refer to Fermata’s customers as “Companies”. People who can access Fermata directly are “Users”. We refer to your customers as “Accounts”
Account
Each of your customers will have an account on your Fermata instance. Each account can support both payments into your platform and payouts from your platform. You can access a list of your end-user accounts in the Treasury Management section of Fermata Control.
Accounts by default are created without a credit line attached. To enable postpaid invoicing, or postpaid overage, you will need to enable a credit line for the account. You can enable a default credit line to be applied to all accounts in the settings area of Fermata Control.
You can manage and adjust an account’s credit line in the Treasury Management tab of Fermata Control.
Balances
Within each customer account you can setup multiple Balance Accounts that can store positive or negative balance. Balance can be stored in a tokenized denomination (e.g. credits, tokens, images, downloads, seats) or in a fiat currency (e.g. USD, GBP, EUR, AUD).
As users take action on your platform, you’ll stream us product events. Each event type will be linked to it’s own balance account. As usage is measured by the Fermata engine, we’ll update the balance accounts accordingly.
Root account
Root accounts are the encompassing fiat currency account attached to each customer. This feeds and funds the sub balance accounts. Root accounts store the customer credit lines which determine how much negative balance a customer can rack up before they are stopped.
Metadata
You can transmit metadata on each event and each account. This could be an end-user ID, which of your clients was used, or whatever open data you want to track.
Event
At the atomic level, you will stream product events to Fermata. Events can be anything that occurs on the platform. They can be tagged in Fermata in different ways: usage, revenue, and payouts.
Each event also stores a cost — aka a Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) — which is used to determine the margin on a given event. You can set a default COGS for each event, or you can dynamically override the COGS on a per event basis via the API.
Billing Periods
A billing period is the sliding window of time for which your customer is billed for usage or access on your platform. You can define billing periods to be any set number of days, weeks, months, quarters, or years.
Plan
Plans control how usage is metered and gets accumulated as revenue or payouts.
Payment Models
Plans can be setup as postpaid, prepaid, or in a hybrid format.
Postpaid: Usage events and charges accrue over the course of the billing period. At the end of the billing period, an invoice is generated for the charges owed. Any corrections and adjustments are made, and then customers are given a timeframe to complete payment (usually Net-30).
Prepaid: Customers make an initial deposit of funds to begin using your platform. As usage is accrued, it’s subtracted from their balance. Usually, when the balance crosses a specific threshold it is automatically refilled. At the end of the billing period, a statement of charges is generated.
Hybrid: Customers subscribe to a recurring subscription that includes an amount of included usage of your platform. If they exceed this usage, overage is accrued. At the end of the biling period, the overage is automatically charged alongside the next month’s renewal.
Billing Models
Plans also support specific billing models, which define the way customers’s bills are structured. A few examples are below:
Pay-as-you-go: Customer usage is tabulated as they utilize the platform.
Subscription: Recurring charges enable access to a specific feature set.
Seat-based: Customers are charged based on a number of seats assigned or active during a biling period. This can be prorated by a given time period (minute, hour, day, week, month, etc).
One-off charges: One time product fees, like an initiation fee.
Tiered pricing: Customers are charged based on how much of a feature they consume. As they consume, charges progressively charge.
Multi-metered plans: Multiple concurrent meters are tracking separate product features, and the customer is billed for a combination of usage across these meters.
Free trials: Both time-based and usage-based free trials
Net Value Usage Billing: A given action is performed multiple times on a platform, and customers are charged based on a final, minimum, maximum, or mean state achieved during the billing period.
Overage + top ups: Customers are charged at a different rate, or offered the ability to buy sets of usage credits when they have exhaused those included in their plan.