# About Billing Cycles

A billing cycle type specifies the general billing recurrence, that is, how often a subscriber gets a bill. Every subscriber is assigned to one usage cycle type.

MetraNet supports the following Billing Cycle types: Daily, Weekly, Biweekly, Semi-monthly, Monthly, Quarterly, Annually

In addition, when associating a billing cycle type with a priceable item or product offering, you can further define the billing recurrence with the following options:

- Absolute: this is an absolute date range based solely on the cycle type and date (start and optionally end). For example, a March 1, 2001 – March 31, 2001 is an example of a Monthly cycle with a start date of 1.

- Relative: this is a date range relative to a subscriber's billing cycle. You can choose this type when subscribing someone to a new service, and you wish to have him or her keep receiving bills on the same date as currently.

- Constrained: in some circumstances, you'll want a product offering to only be available with a specific billing cycle type. In this case, the product offering's billing cycle is said to be constrained.

## See Also

Group Subscription Billing Cycles