Products

Your product is essentially a collection of plans that your customer will subscribe to.

The easiest way to understand how products work is by looking at some examples of businesses that sell different products.

Window Cleaning Service

Definition: Window cleaning as a service is the act of paying somebody to clean or wash the exterior of your windows professionally, this can be done manually or with the aid of technological equipment.

The 'window cleaning service' is the product that this business will sell. This product will be comprised of different plans. The plans that this company may offer could include a cleaning service of 1-5 windows, or 6-10 windows, for example. When you define your plans, you must also define the frequency at which your customers pay using your cycles.

Let's break this down for you.

The name of the business who signed up with Billsby: Windows R' Us
The product: Window Cleaning Service
The billing cycle it has:

Video Streaming Service

Definition: Video streaming as a service is an internet-based delivery service for movies, TV programs and videos, often utilizing both live and on demand content.

'Video streaming' is the product that this business will sell. This product will be comprised of different plans. However, this company is selling their product in many different countries, which means that their streaming service in the USA would need to be a separate product to their streaming service in Canada. This is because each product can only be a single currency.

Whilst customers can change between plans within a product at any time, allowing currency swaps as a part of this, done without cancelling and then reinstating the plan, causes technical - and in some cases - legal difficulties.

So, customers within the USA would need to subscribe to the product of 'Video Streaming USA' and then select one of the plans available for this product that best matches their needs; this would usually be divided into Basic, Standard, or Premium plans.

Let's break this down for you.

The name of the business who signed up with Billsby: Streaming and Crying
The products: Video Streaming USA, Video Streaming Canada
The billing cycle each product has:

Now, this media-service business offers video streaming of TV series' and films. Their product, however, is defined as a streaming service in a particular country they're selling to. Because we differentiate between the name and display name of products in Billsby, they are able to display their products as 'Video Streaming' in every country and then manage them in the backend using the names with the country appended. Problem solved.

Gym Membership

Definition: The cost of membership to attend and use a gym.

A 'gym membership' is the product that this business will sell. This product will be comprised of different plans. Gym memberships are normally paid monthly or annually depending on the gym's terms and conditions of membership.

As a gym with multiple locations, this business needs to create a product for each of their locations. Their customers can then choose a membership for one of the locations and select from a range of plans, one that best suits their needs.

This allows the business to have complete independence when setting the terms for each of their locations. For example, if they wanted to charge a premium for their most centrally located studio, they could simply create the plans for this product accordingly.

What this also entails is the ability to run different promotions at each location at any time.

Let's break this down for you.

The name of the business who signed up with Billsby: Fitness Freak
The products: Manchester Gym Membership, Liverpool Gym Membership, London, Watford Gym Membership
The billing cycles for the Manchester and Liverpool products:

The billing cycle for the London, Watford product (with premium):

Also, if you so desired, you could create additional plans for each location which charge annually rather than monthly. Many gyms choose to charge for eleven months rather than twelve so as to encourage customers to commit to a year long contract due to the ability for contract termination when customers are charged on a monthly basis.