A billing period defines how often invoices will be generated and when exactly they are to be produced. PortaBilling supports the following billing periods:
- Daily – covers a 24-hour period. If a customer’s account is activated at 12:00 on March 11th, his first invoice covers the period until March 12th; the second period covers the period from the beginning of March 12th until March 13th, etc.
- Weekly – covers a 7-day period (Monday through Sunday). For example, if a customer’s account is created on Wednesday, his first statement covers the period from Wednesday to Sunday; the second statement covers the period from Monday to Sunday, etc.
- Semimonthly – Covers a period from the 1st to the 15th or from the 16th to the last day of the month.
- Monthly – covers the period from the 1st of the month to the last day of that month.
- Monthly (anniversary) – covers the period from the Nth day of the month to the day before the Nth day of the following month. N is the day of the month when the customer was created; therefore, if a customer was created on March 19th, their invoices will always cover the period from the 19th of the current month to the 18th of the following month.
To avoid complications for customers who were created on the 29th, 30th or 31st day of the month, their first billing period will cover the time until the 28th day of the following month, and thereafter will always cover the period from the 28th until the 28th. For instance, if a customer was created on March 30th, his first invoice will cover the period from that day until April 28th, while his next invoice will cover the period from April 28th until May 28th.
- 30 days – every billing period is exactly 30 days, so if a customer was created on March 20th, his first invoice will cover the period from March 20th to April 18th, the second invoice will cover the period from April 19th to May 18th, and so on. This invoicing method allows you to make subscription fees more straightforward compared to regular monthly billing, where the same monthly fee is applied to longer (e.g., March) as well as shorter periods (e.g., February or April).
Every billing period is adjusted to the corresponding customer’s (or vendor’s) billing time zone. So, in the case of a customer with the Los Angeles time zone and a weekly billing cycle, the billing period will start at midnight on Monday Los Angeles time, while for a customer with a weekly billing cycle and the Singapore time zone it will start at midnight on Monday Singapore time. Thus, while both invoices will cover 7 days (168 hours), they will actually refer to different intervals of time, with a 15-hour difference.
