# Group Subscription Billing Cycles

The billing cycle for a group subscription is only required for discounts and aggregate priceable items—and only when those priceable items are billing cycle relative or billing cycle constrained.

The system will only prompt for the billing cycle when it is absolutely necessary:

- If the product offering does not contain a discount or aggregate priceable item, you will not prompted to specify a billing cycle.

- If the product offering contains a discount or aggregate priceable item, but both have fixed cycles, you will not be prompted to specify a billing cycle.

- If the product offering contains a discount or aggregate priceable item, and one or more is specified as billing cycle relative, you must choose a billing cycle.

- If the product offering contains a discount or aggregate priceable item and one or more is specified as billing cycle constrained (that is, requiring a specific cycle), you won't have a choice: you must use the specified billing cycle.

## Examples

If the product offering does not contain a discount or aggregate priceable item, you will not prompted to specify a billing cycle:

An unlimited fax usage product offering contains a $20 recurring charge only (and not a discount or aggregate priceable item). When you create the group subscription, you will not need to specify the billing cycle.

If the product offering contains a discount or aggregate priceable item, but both have fixed cycles, you will not be prompted to specify a billing cycle:

A service provider offers a discount for the first three months of the year. The discount offers $20 off 2000 or more conferencing minutes for each month. The discount starts on January 1st and ends on March 31st. Since the cycle for the discount is fixed, you do not need to specify it in the group subscription.

If the product offering contains a discount or aggregate priceable item, and one or more is specified as billing cycle relative, you must choose a billing cycle:

A product offering called Virtual MeetingSpace consists of 2000 minutes of free audio conferencing, with additional minutes charged at $0.40 per minute. The product administrator specifies that this priceable item is billing cycle relative in Catalog Manager. Therefore, when the account administrator logs into Account Manager and creates a group subscription for this product offering, he or she will have to specify the billing cycle.

If the product offering contains a discount or aggregate priceable item and one or more is specified as billing cycle constrained, you won't have a choice: you must use the specified billing cycle:

MeetingSpace, Inc. bills quarterly, so subscriber Phil Austin receives his bill every three months. MeetingSpace offers a monthly discount of %50 off the first 2000 or more minutes of conferencing for a period of 6 months. Since the discount specifies a monthly application of the %50 off, then the discount cannot be applied using Phil's cycle, or any cycle other than monthly.

## See Also

About Billing Cycles