49. Tenant billing and invoicing
The practical how-do-I-pay-Daalu reference. Read it once; you’ll rarely need it again.
This is the mechanics chapter: payment methods, what’s on an invoice, changing plans, and disputes. Billing is per tenant — one tenant gets one invoice — so everything here is scoped to your tenant.
Payment methods
Two options:
- Credit card (default). Configure in Settings → Tenant → Billing. The card is charged automatically on the 1st for the previous month’s usage. Default for Starter and Team.
- Invoice (ACH / wire). Available on Business and up. Requires a NET-30 agreement; talk to sales to set it up. Invoice customers receive a PDF on the 1st and pay per NET terms.
What’s on the invoice
A typical Daalu invoice has:
| Line | What it is |
|---|---|
| Plan charge | The monthly subscription for your tier |
| Seat overages | If active seats exceeded the plan allowance |
| Source overages | Same, for connected sources |
| Inference | Per-call metering against each tier that served you |
| Handling fee | A small flat fee on top of commercial pass-through |
| Add-ons | Extended retention, custom dashboards, etc. |
Each line shows unit, rate, quantity, and total. The backing data is on Usage & Pricing → Show line items at any point during the month — the invoice is just a month-end snapshot of figures you can watch accrue in real time.
Note. Inference served by your own GPU carries no per-call charge, so it never appears as a metered line. If you’re on a your-own-GPU SKU, you’ll see the flat licence instead. See Chapter 47.
Tax
Tax (VAT / GST / US sales tax) is collected where required, based on your business address. For US customers, sales tax applies in states where Daalu has nexus — check your most recent invoice for specifics.
If you have an exemption certificate, upload it via Settings → Tenant → Billing → Tax certificate. Our finance team validates it within 5 business days.
Changing plan
Settings → Tenant → Plan.
- Upgrade — effective immediately, with a pro-rated charge for the remainder of the current month.
- Downgrade — effective on the 1st of next month; you keep the higher-tier features through month-end.
Downgrades carry a sanity check: if your current seat count exceeds the lower tier’s allowance, you’re warned before it applies.
Cancellation
To cancel:
- Settings → Tenant → Plan → Cancel subscription.
- Pick an effective date: end of the current month, or a specific future date.
- Tell us why (optional, but it genuinely helps us).
- Confirm.
Your tenant keeps working until the effective date. After that, your data is retained read-only for 30 days on a separate URL, then deleted.
Refunds
For specific incidents — downtime inside an SLA, a billing error, an
unintentional charge — refunds are issued within 5 business days of
an approved request. Email [email protected] with details.
Routine “I didn’t use it as much as I expected” generally isn’t refundable — downgrading is the right tool for that.
Multiple tenants per company
If your company runs several tenants for organizational reasons (separate teams or environments), each tenant has its own billing. Talk to sales about an Enterprise arrangement that consolidates invoicing across them.
Auditing past invoices
Settings → Tenant → Billing → Invoices lists every historical invoice with download links. Each PDF includes the line items, payment date, payment method (card last-4 or wire reference), and your billing address.
For accounting integrations:
- QuickBooks Online and Xero — invoice export format compatible.
- NetSuite — Enterprise add-on.
Billing notifications
Three things we’ll email about, to your tenant’s billing contact (set in Settings → Tenant → Billing → Contact; defaults to the admin who created the tenant):
- Invoice issued — on the 1st of each month.
- Payment success / failure — when the charge runs.
- Card expiring — 30 days out, with a reminder at 7 days.
Disputes
If a line item looks wrong:
- Find it in Settings → Tenant → Billing → Invoices → [invoice] → Line items.
- Click Question this line. Support gets the line item plus the underlying usage data automatically.
- We respond within 2 business days with the usage breakdown.
We err on the side of customer trust. If a line item is genuinely ambiguous, we’ll credit it.