A concept that is not often talked about, much less understood, is the Monthly Billing Date on a hosting account. What customers may not realize is that the Monthly Billing Date affects all aspects of charges on an account. It affects when statements are generated, when services renew, the pro-ration of services ordered in the middle of a billing cycle, the charge for a plan change, and more.
So what exactly is the Monthly Billing Date on an account and how is it determined?
The Monthly Billing Date on an account is the monthly date on which billing activities are based. The date is determined when the account is first activated. Once set, the Monthly Billing Date cannot be changed in the billing system.
Let’s say we have an annual hosting service ordered on January 17th. The Monthly Billing Date will be the 16th of every month. The initial charge for the hosting service will be for the period from January 17 of the current year, through January 16th of the following year.
If the hosting account was ordered on the 22nd, then the Monthly Billing Date would be the 21st.
What happens on dates affected by changing month lengths?
Accounts ordered on the 1st still have their Monthly Billing Date set to the 31st, even if there is no 31st in the previous month. So accounts ordered on March 1st, July 1st, October 1st, etc. have a Monthly Billing Date of the 31st.
So how does the billing system handle the Monthly Billing Dates on months that do not have that date?
In other words, how are February 29th, 30th or 31st, June 31st, September 31st, etc handled? Our billing system simply groups them to the last day of the month. E.g., All accounts with billing activity in a non-leap year February along with a Monthly Billing Dates of 29th, 30th and 31st are handled on February 28th.
Billing for customers with base hosting plan only
The simplest scenario is if the customer only has the base hosting plan on the annual billing cycle. Here, for an account with Monthly Billing Date of January 16th, the annual hosting fees will be charged every year on January 16th. If the billing cycle is quarterly, the hosting renewal fees are charged on the 16th of every three months after the initial signup.
What happens with Addons and plan changes?
DiscountASP.NET hosting customers can order Addons to enhance their hosting services at any time. The two most common questions when customers order an Addon are
- How much will I be charged?
- When can I get a statement (for my records or accounting department)?
Let’s go back to our example of an annual account which renews every January 16th. If a new MS SQL database is ordered on April 5th, how much will the charge be? The charge will be pro-rated from April 5th of this year, through to the account’s next renewal, January 16th of the next year. At $10/month, the charge will be approximately $91.00.
The statement for the charge will be available on the next Monthly Billing Date, which will be April 16th.
We hope this post didn’t make your head explode and answers some questions regarding how our billing system works. Remember, if you ever have any billing related questions, please send them to the Billing team.