Billing & Charging is an optional capability of the Digital Vending Machine. Contact us to find out more.
Overview
The DVM’s Billing & Charging capability gives Resellers a fully managed billing engine for their subscription offers. When licensed, the DVM takes responsibility for calculating, scheduling, and issuing charges to your billing system — all driven automatically from the plan configuration you define in your Offers. This means that once an Offer is live and a consumer is provisioned, the DVM handles the entire billing lifecycle without any manual intervention: from the initial charge at activation, through recurring renewals, to pro-rated adjustments when a consumer upgrades or downgrades mid-cycle.Reporting and notifications
Billing & Charging includes reports and lifecycle notifications to help you monitor billing activity and reconcile charges.Billing & charging reports
View billing forecast, billing plan, charge, and refund report formats under Dashboard and reporting.
Billing lifecycle notifications
Understand the billing events the DVM sends to your systems under Notifications.
Billing reports and billing lifecycle notifications are available when the Billing & Charging capability is enabled.
How it works
The foundation of Billing & Charging is the plan — a configuration you define when building an Offer in the DVM Offer Catalog. The plan tells the DVM everything it needs to know to manage billing for that offer:Plan Type
Whether the offer is a recurring subscription, fixed-term, or transaction-based.
Billing Frequency
How often the consumer is charged — monthly, annually, or another defined cadence.
Pricing
The charge amount and currency, including any tier-based pricing for upgrade and downgrade scenarios.
Dependencies & setup
To use Billing & Charging, two things need to be in place:1
License the Billing & Charging capability
Billing & Charging is an optional add-on to the DVM. It is enabled for your account during commercial onboarding with Bango. Once active, you can configure billing plans on any Offer you create in the DVM Offer Catalog.
2
Configure your POST /charges endpoint
When the DVM issues a charge or refund, it sends the request to a
POST /charges (or POST /refunds) endpoint hosted by you — your billing system. This endpoint is registered and configured during your initial technical onboarding with Bango.All charge and refund requests for your offers will be sent to this endpoint. Your system is responsible for processing each request and returning an APPROVED or DECLINED response.The
POST /charges endpoint configuration is set up once during onboarding and applies across all offers you create. If you need to update your endpoint, contact your Bango integration team.3
Define a billing plan on your Offer
When creating an Offer in the DVM Offer Catalog, you configure the plan that governs billing for that offer — the plan type, billing frequency, and price. From this point, the DVM manages all charge activity for consumers provisioned with that offer automatically.
From offer to paid invoice
Every charge follows a consistent path, from the moment a consumer is provisioned, through to payment being collected and confirmed.1
A product is activated
When a consumer signs up or makes a purchase, we capture the key details: what they bought, what it costs, and when to charge them.From there, a billing plan is created automatically. It keeps track of the relationship between the consumer and their product, giving you a single view of charges, renewals, and changes over time.
2
A product is activated
When a consumer is provisioned with an Offer, the DVM captures the key billing details from the plan: what was purchased, what it costs, and when to charge. A billing plan is created automatically and the first charge is scheduled immediately.
3
A charge is scheduled
Every charge is scheduled at the right time. For subscriptions, that’s the renewal date. For one-off purchases, it’s immediate.The scheduler makes sure charges aren’t missed. If there’s a temporary outage, network issue, or system restart, the charge is retried and processed as expected. Nothing gets lost along the way.
4
A charge is scheduled
Every charge is scheduled at the right time. For subscriptions, the initial charge fires at activation and subsequent renewals are scheduled according to the billing frequency. For one-off charges (such as a pro-rated upgrade), the charge is issued immediately at the point of the change.The scheduler ensures charges are never missed. If there’s a temporary outage or network issue, the charge is retried automatically.
5
An invoice is generated
When it’s time to charge, we bring together everything needed to calculate the payment.That includes who the consumer is, what they have, the price they should pay, and any adjustments, such as a prorated charge for a mid-cycle upgrade.We then create an invoice: a clear record of what was charged and why.
6
An invoice is generated
When it’s time to charge, the DVM calculates the payment amount — including any adjustments such as a pro-rated charge for a mid-cycle upgrade — and generates an invoice: a clear record of what was charged and why.
7
Money is collected
We then send the invoice for payment. Once the payment succeeds or fails, the result is recorded against the invoice and any relevant notifications are triggered automatically.If a payment fails, retry rules take over to recover the charge without manual intervention
8
The charge is sent to your billing system
The DVM sends the charge to your registered
POST /charges endpoint. Your billing system processes the payment and responds with APPROVED or DECLINED. The result is recorded and any relevant notifications are triggered automatically.If a payment fails with a retryable reason, the DVM retries the charge automatically using a Fibonacci backoff schedule for up to 24 hours. See Billing Retry Schedule for details.9
We keep records
Our platform maintains a complete history of billing activity, including plan creation, invoicing, payments, and status changes.This information remains available throughout the lifecycle of a subscription, providing a clear record of what happened and when. Teams can use this history to support subscribers, reconcile transactions, generate reports, and meet audit requirements.
10
Records are maintained
The DVM maintains a complete history of all billing activity — plan creation, invoicing, charges, refunds, and status changes — available throughout the lifecycle of the subscription for reconciliation, reporting, and audit purposes.
What the DVM manages for you
Once Billing & Charging is configured, the DVM automatically handles:Recurring renewal charges
Charges issued on your defined billing cadence (e.g. monthly) for the lifetime of the subscription. See Recurring Charges.
Pro-rated charges and refunds
Mid-cycle adjustments when a consumer upgrades or downgrades their product entitlement, calculated proportionally against the remaining days in the billing period. See Pro-ration.
One-off charges
Single payments triggered by specific events — such as an immediate upgrade charge — outside the recurring billing schedule. See One-off Charges.
Refunds
Refunds issued on cancellation, downgrade, or where a consumer is eligible for a full refund. See Refunds.
Charge retries
Automatic retry of failed charges using a structured backoff strategy, for up to 24 hours per billing event. See Billing Retry Schedule.
The fundamentals that underpin the platform
The plan is the source of configurationEverything the DVM needs to manage billing — frequency, price, plan type — is defined once on the Offer. The DVM derives all charge calculations and schedules from this configuration automatically.
The invoice is the source of truthEvery charge produces an invoice — a formal record of what was charged, why, and when. Invoices capture the consumer’s identity, the product they hold, the price applied, and any adjustments. They are the primary reference point for any billing query.
The scheduler guarantees deliveryCharges don’t fire and forget. They are placed into a scheduler that persists the intent to charge and retries automatically if something fails. Revenue is protected even during outages, slow external systems, or transient errors.
Everything is queryableEvery billing plan, invoice, and charge has a unique identifier. Customer service, operations, and partner teams can query the full history of any account — what was charged, when, and what the outcome was.
Real-time notificationsKey billing events — invoice issued, payment taken, payment failed, plan status changed — are surfaced as notifications to your systems or operations tooling. See Notifications.