Kill Bill Glossary

A record that contains details about the customer such as name, address, email address, phone number, etc. Also referred to as a "customer account."

A product that that can be bundled with a base product. See Product Category.

The software intermediary that enables communication between two applications. For more information, see the Kill Bill API Reference.

The amount that your business owes to a customer. It is generated when an administrator adds a credit, a subscription is cancelled, etc. It is calculated as the sum of CBA_ADJ invoice items.

A product that can have an addon product. See Product Category.

A type of billing mode in which you can charge for services that are provided at a later date.

A type of billing mode in which you can charge for services that are delivered in a previous billing period.

The date on which billing starts for a subscription. See also Entitlement Date.

The method in which you invoice for a recurring subscription. "Billing in advance" and "billing in arrear" are two types of billing modes.

The frequency in which Kill Bill invoices the account for one or more subscriptions. (Examples: DAILY, WEEKLY, BIWEEKLY, MONTHLY, QUARTERLY, BIANNUAL, ANNUAL, BIENNIAL, and NO_BILLING_PERIOD)

A collection of subscriptions associated with a single service instance. For example, a customer might have a base subscription for her phone, plus an add-on subscription for international dialing. Because both subscriptions are associated with the same phone, they are collected into a single bundle. An account may have several bundles, each with one or more subscriptions. Also known as a "subscription bundle."

The day of the month the invoice is created for an account. Note that this is applicable only to monthly-based subscriptions (subscriptions that have a MONTHLY, QUARTERLY, ANNUAL, BIMESTRIAL, BIANNUAL, BIENNIAL billing period) as opposed to DAILY, WEEKLY, etc. subscriptions.

A description of the products, plans, phases, price lists, and rules that are available to customers. A catalog lets Kill Bill know what is being offered for sale and how much to charge for it.

The date up to which the subscription has been invoiced for. Irrespective of whether the billing happens IN_ADVANCE or IN_ARREAR, each subscription has a date up to which it was invoiced for. This is the CTD. For IN_ADVANCE billing mode, the CTD is a date in the future while for IN_ARREAR, it is a date in the past.

An account that is associated with a parent account. Setting up a parent-child associations lets you define which entity is responsible for paying the invoice. See also Parent.

An invoice corresponding to a credit. It is generated when an administrator adds an account credit. It consists of two invoice items: a negative CREDIT_ADJ item and a positive CBA_ADJ item.

The person who purchases a product or service from your organization. See also Account.

An attribute (key-value pair) that may be attached to a resource like an account, bundle, subscription, and so on.

A type of phase that defines a lower price for a set time period (after which the regular price automatically takes effect). A discount phase is specified as part of a plan within the catalog.

The change of a subscription from one plan to another plan of lesser dollar value.

See Overdue System.

Defines the length of time for a phase. Kill Bill supports durations of days, months, years or unlimited.

Represents access to the product/service provided to an end user (customer). It is separate from billing. See Subscription.

The date on which a user gains access to the underlying entitlement or product/service . See also Billing Start Date.

A type of phase in which no end date is specified and Kill Bill continually bills the account for the subscription until the customer cancels it. A evergreen phase is specified as part of a plan within the catalog.

An alternative unique ID for an object, which you can use to map the object with an external resource. For example, you could define an external key for a specific customer account, which is the same as the identifier used in your CRM system.

A type of payment method that enables you to track payments that occur outside of Kill Bill (Example: check payment). Its functionality is provided as part of the Kill Bill payment system.

A type of phase that specifies an end date and during which Kill Bill continually bills the account for the subscription. A fixed term phase is specified as part of a plan within the catalog.

An invoice is a bill provided to a customer for charges that are payable on the customer’s account. A single invoice consolidates charges for all subscriptions held by that customer for a specified time period. Invoices may be set to be paid automatically, or may be paid manually by the customer. An invoice consists of one or more invoice items.

The amount that a customer is charged as part of an invoice. Also known as "Invoice Total", "Total", "Charged Amount" or simply "Amount". At a high level, it is calculated by adding the amounts on all the chargeable invoice items associated with an invoice. See charged amount for more information.

The amount that the customer owes as part of an invoice. It is positive if the customer owes something or zero otherwise. At a high level, it is calculated by subtracting the paid amount from the invoice amount. See invoice balance for more information.

Represents a single item charged on an invoice. Given an active subscription, one could see multiple items for that subscription on a single invoice, including recurring items, usage items, fixed price items, etc. There can also be items for different subscriptions on the same invoice, as well as items that are unrelated to subscriptions, such as adjustments and taxes.

Specifies the type of invoice item which can be one of EXTERNAL_CHARGE, FIXED, RECURRING, REPAIR_ADJ, CBA_ADJ, ITEM_ADJ, USAGE, TAX, PARENT_SUMMARY. Refer to the Subscription Billing document for more information.

The amount that the customer is charged as part of an invoice at the time of invoice creation. At a high level, it is calculated by adding the amounts on all the chargeable invoice items associated with an invoice at the time of invoice creation.

Payment made against a specific invoice. By default, Kill Bill attempts to make a payment against an invoice using the account’s default payment method.

Refund amount associated with an invoice payment. Kill Bill allows issuing a full or partial refund against an invoice payment.

The current state of an invoice, which can be in a DRAFT, COMMITTED or VOID state.

An internal Kill Bill service that helps ensure that payment transactions end up in a terminal state.

An acronym for Kill (Bill) Admin User Interface, this browser-based application lets back office staff (in Finance, Marketing, Development, etc.) perform Kill Bill-related tasks, such as creating customer accounts, subscriptions, adding plugins, and so forth.

The person responsible for installing or configuring Kill Bill.

A command line tool that facilitates the installation of Kill Bill, its plugins, and Kaui. It also provides utility helpers useful for the day-to-day management of a production system.

A Kill Bill module that defines the flow that the system must follow when an account is overdue (that is, has an unpaid balance). It is used in conjunction with the payment retry module.

An account that contains one or more child accounts. Setting up a parent-child associations lets you define which entity is responsible for paying the invoice. See also Child.

A Payment in Kill Bill is an amount paid or payable on a specific account due to an invoice or independent of any invoice. A payment may be associated with a series of payment transactions.

A Payment Attempt is an attempt to perform a payment transaction. A payment attempt may succeed or fail, and a payment transaction may have more than one payment attempt.

An external entity that processes the payment. Some examples are Stripe, Adyen, Qualpay.

A Kill Bill record that represents an abstraction corresponding to a payment scheme like a credit card, debit card, or PayPal. An account can have multiple payment methods corresponding to different payment gateways. For example, an account can have a credit card payment method as well as a PayPal payment method. Each account also has a default payment method associated with it. When the account needs to be charged for recurring payments, the system uses the default payment method.

An internal mechanism by which Kill Bill can retry failed payments as per a configured schedule.

A payment transaction represents a payment operation such as authorization, charge back, refund, etc. A payment transaction takes place using a payment method. The transaction is processed by a plugin, which provides access to the appropriate payment gateway. The payment gateway processes the transaction, using the payment method provided in the request.

In Kill Bill, a defined action that can be performed in a system (for example, TAG_CAN_ADD OR ACCOUNT_CAN_CREATE). You can assign one or more permissions to a role, which can then be associated with a user. The user can only perform the permissions associated with that role.

The time periods within a plan. Kill Bill phases can be any of the following types: TRIAL, DISCOUNT, FIXEDTERM, or EVERGREEN. Note that a plan has at least one phase (i.e., a plan cannot be "empty" of phases.) A phase is also referred to as a "plan phase." See Plan below.

Details for the terms of the subscription contract. In particular, plans define how much a customer pays for a product and how often they pay it (Example: A Standard product at $100 per month). A plan consists of at least one phase and can have multiple phases (Example: A discount phase followed by a regular price phase).

A piece of code written on top of the Kill Bill platform that interacts with the system. It can be called from the Kill Bill platform through plugin APIs or can make API calls to Kill Bill. It can also receive notifications from the Kill Bill platform. See Plugin Introduction.

One or more plans that have discount/special pricing. Price lists are defined in the catalog. Along with price lists, you define catalog rules that specify which price list to use if a customer changes plans.

A product or service that the customer can purchase (or rent/lease). A product can be associated with multiple plans, each plan specifying different ways the product can be purchased (e.g., a monthly plan and an annual plan).

A type of product. Possible values are ADDON, BASE, and STANDALONE.

The rules that determine how Kill Bill should behave when a subscription is created, cancelled or changed. Also known as "catalog rules."

A contract between your organization and a customer to purchase a particular product/service with particular terms. Kill Bill associates a subscription with a plan, an account, and a start date. In other words, Subscription = Entitlement + Billing Information.

See [bundle].

A product that cannot have any addon products. See Product Category. A subscription bundle can include multiple standalone subscriptions. This is as opposed to a subscription bundle with a base product which can have only one base subscription and zero or more addon subscriptions within the same bundle.

A property that can be added to objects (such as accounts, bundles or subscriptions). There are two kinds of Tags: system tags and user tags.

Specifies a schema or template for creating a tag. Before you can attach a user tag to an object like account or subscription, a tag definition needs to be created corresponding to it. Once a tag definition is created, you can attach the corresponding tag to multiple objects.

The division or organization that is using Kill Bill as a group of users. Note that an organization can have more than one tenant, as Kill Bill supports multi-tenancy.

A type of phase that defines a time period during which the account is not charged (or is heavily discounted). After the trial period, the regular price automatically takes effect. A trial phase is specified as part of a plan within the catalog.

The change of a subscription from one plan to another plan of higher dollar value.

Pricing a service or item based on its consumption or usage. Kill Bill supports two types of usage billing modes, CONSUMABLE and CAPACITY. See Usage Billing.

A person who logs on to Kaui.

A group of permissions that specify which actions the user is allowed to perform in Kaui. A user can have multiple roles. A role can have multiple permissions.

Acronym for eXtensible Markup Language, which is used to define the data within the Kill Bill catalog.