Subscription Billing Workflows

Choose the billing workflow that matches your business model. Each workflow controls who owns the subscription, who receives the invoice, and how usage is tracked.

Which workflow do I need?

Every Flexprice subscription has a subscription_type that controls billing ownership. Use the table below to pick the right workflow before you start.

Workflow	Your situation	Who gets invoiced	subscription_type
Standalone	Each customer is independent: their own plan, invoice, and wallet	Subscription owner	standalone
Consolidated Billing	One parent contract covers multiple child entities; one invoice to HQ	Parent customer	parent (HQ) + inherited (children, auto-created)
Delegated Invoicing	Each customer has their own subscription, but a third party pays all the bills	Delegated payer	standalone with invoicing redirect
Grouped Invoicing	Multiple separate subscriptions for the same company; Finance wants a single invoice	Parent subscription’s customer	grouped_invoicing (children) + parent

If none of these match, start with Standalone. It is the default and works for the majority of direct B2B and B2C billing scenarios.

Key concept: hierarchy lives on subscriptions, not customers

Flexprice keeps customer records flat. There are no parent or child fields on a customer. All billing relationships are configured on the subscription. This means:

• You can mix billing workflows per customer without restructuring your customer data
• Switching a customer from standalone to grouped invoicing is a subscription operation, not a customer edit
• Two customers can be related for billing purposes while remaining independent entities in your system

Workflows at a glance

Standalone

Default. One customer, one subscription, one invoice. No configuration needed.

Consolidated Billing

Enterprise HQ buys one plan. Subsidiaries generate usage. One consolidated invoice.

Delegated Invoicing

Reseller model. Each end customer has their own subscription. One party pays all invoices.

Grouped Invoicing

Multi-product company. Three separate subscriptions. Finance wants one monthly invoice.

Mutual exclusion

The four inheritance fields on Create Subscription are mutually exclusive. You can only specify one billing relationship per subscription:

Field	Cannot be combined with
external_customer_ids_to_inherit_subscription	invoicing_customer_external_id, subscriptions_ids_for_grouped_invoicing, parent_subscription_id
invoicing_customer_external_id	external_customer_ids_to_inherit_subscription, subscriptions_ids_for_grouped_invoicing
subscriptions_ids_for_grouped_invoicing	external_customer_ids_to_inherit_subscription, invoicing_customer_external_id, parent_subscription_id
parent_subscription_id	external_customer_ids_to_inherit_subscription, subscriptions_ids_for_grouped_invoicing