Kaui is the back-office user interface for Kill Bill. This guide walks you through several tasks in Kaui. You will become familiar with moving around the application, and you’ll learn some basic Kill Bill concepts:

Before You Begin

Make sure you have installed Kill Bill and Kaui and launched them per the Getting Started guide.

Step 1. Create a Tenant

Kill Bill supports multi-tenancy, where each tenant has its own data, configuration, and so forth. This section explains how to create a tenant the first time you log in to Kaui.

  1. Log in to Kaui with the default credentials of admin/password.

    login screen

    Kaui prompts you to create a tenant:

    AddNewTenant Blank
  2. Fill in the fields:

    • Use bob for Name (tenant name).

    • For API Key, use bob, and for API Secret, use lazar.

  3. Click the Save button.

After you create a tenant, the active tenant name appears in the upper right corner of the Kaui screen:

select tenant name

Step 2. Set Up a Simple Catalog and Plans

The Kill Bill catalog contains products and plans definitions. This XML configuration file is really powerful and offers various options for handling trials, add-ons, upgrades / downgrades, and so forth. (For more information on the Kill Bill catalog, see the Catalog section in the Subscription Billing guide.)

For this tutorial, instead of starting with the XML catalog, you’ll learn how to create a simple catalog in Kaui and configure it with two plans.

Note
Note: The simple catalog supports a subset of the regular XML catalog features and isn’t intended to serve as a catalog in production. For more details on the simple catalog, see the "Simple Plan" section in the API Reference.

To create the simple catalog and two plans:

  1. Click the tenant name in the upper right corner:

    select tenant name

    Kaui opens the Tenant Configuration page. At the bottom of the page, you’ll see the a row of tabs:

    tenant config labeled
  2. Click the plus sign next to Existing Plans.

    add simple catalog

    Kaui opens the Catalog Configuration screen.

  3. Fill in the fields as shown below:

    catalog standard free
  4. Click the Save button.

    Kaui returns to the Tenant Configuration screen.

  5. Click the plus sign again.

  6. On the Catalog Configuration screen, fill in the fields as shown below:

    catalog standard monthly
  7. Click the Save button, and Kaui returns to the Tenant Configuration screen.

    You will now see the two plans you have created. Note that when you created the first plan, Kaui created the simple catalog:

    simple catalog two plans labeled

Step 3. Create an Account

In this section, we will create an account for a customer, which stores the data your organization uses to transact business with a customer. To keep it simple, we will create an account with a minimum of information.

  1. At the top of any Kaui screen, click Create New Account.

    Kaui opens the Add New Account screen.

  2. Fill in the Name field as shown:

    create new account
  3. Scroll down the page and click the Save button.

    Kaui displays the customer name for the new account at the top left of the screen:

    account name labeled

Step 4. Add a Payment Method to the Account

To pay its invoices, an account must have at least one payment method saved. This section explains how to add a payment method to a customer account.

For simplicity, we will create an offline payment method—checks—for the account we created in step 3.

  1. Search for and open the customer account. (If you still have the account open from the previous section, you can skip this step.)

    1. On the main Kaui page, click in the center text box and press the Enter key (or click the search icon).

      ShowSearchHomepage

      Kaui displays the accounts you have created so far for the tenant.

    2. Click on an account, which opens the Account page for the customer.

  2. On the lower right, click the + sign next to Payment Methods.

    payment method empty

    Kaui opens the Add New Payment Method screen.

  3. Verify that ___EXTERNAL_PAYMENT___ appears in the Plugin name field and check the Default payment method checkbox.

    add new payment method cropped
  4. Click the Save button.

    Kaui displays the new payment method as ___EXTERNAL_PAYMENT___ in the Payment Method section. The filled star to its left indicates it is the default payment method:

    payment method with default selected

Step 5. Set Up a Subscription for the Account

You are now ready to create a subscription for the customer.

  1. On the customer Account page, click Subscriptions on the sub-menu.

    subscription blank
  2. Next to Subscription Bundles, select the plus icon ( + ).

    Note
    Note: A subscription bundle is a collection of subscriptions. A bundle contains one base subscription and zero or more add-ons.

    Kill Bill opens the Add New Subscription screen.

  3. In the Plan field, select standard-monthly.

    add new subscription labeled
  4. Click Save.

  5. The customer is now subscribed to the plan, and it is displayed on the Subscriptions page:

    subscription created

Step 6. View the Generated Invoice

To view the invoice that Kill Bill automatically generated for the subscription (step 5):

  1. On the account page, click Invoices on the sub-menu:

    invoices
    Note
    Note: Kill Bill immediately generated the invoice for the first month of the subscription because the plan (on which the subscription is based) has no trial period and because billing is performed in advance by default.
  2. Click on the invoice number to see the invoice details:

    invoice detail

    Because the account has a default payment method defined ( __EXTERNAL_PAYMENT__), Kill Bill automatically pays the amount due on the invoice and displays the payment information below the invoice detail.