Billing Overview

How Billing Works

Whatalo's billing system lets you monetize your plugin with minimal setup. The platform handles payment processing, invoicing, subscription lifecycle, and revenue tracking — you focus on building.

High-level flow:

1. Set pricing: "paid" in your manifest (whatalo.app.ts)
2. Create pricing plans in the Developer Portal
3. Use the App Bridge billing API to manage subscriptions from inside your plugin
4. The platform handles payment processing, invoicing, and revenue tracking
5. Request payouts when your balance reaches the minimum threshold

Key Concepts

Plans

Pricing tiers you define for your plugin. You can have up to 5 active plans per plugin. Plans have a name, price, billing interval, optional trial period, and a feature list for display in the marketplace.

Subscriptions

When a merchant subscribes to one of your plans, an AppSubscription record is created for their installation. There is one subscription per installation. The subscription moves through a lifecycle: pending → trialing (if trial) → active → past_due / canceled.

Trials

You can offer a free trial period (0–90 days). Trials are granted once per installation — reinstalling the plugin does not re-grant a trial. During the trial period, the merchant is not charged. When the trial ends, billing activates automatically.

Commission

The platform takes a percentage of each charge. The default rate is 5%. Your net revenue per charge is:

netAmount = grossAmount - (grossAmount × commissionRate)

The commission rate is snapshotted on each charge record — historical charges are never recalculated if the platform rate changes.

Payouts

You can withdraw your earned balance through the Developer Portal once it reaches the minimum payout threshold of $50.00 USD. You must have at least one verified payout method registered, and only one pending payout request is allowed at a time.

Billing Model

Plugin subscriptions are billed as line items on the merchant's existing platform subscription. No separate billing relationship is created between you and the merchant. The platform manages the entire payment relationship.

Next Steps

• Plans & Pricing — Create and configure your pricing tiers
• Subscription Flow — How merchants subscribe and manage their subscription
• Revenue & Payouts — Track earnings and request payouts
• Billing SDK Reference — Full App Bridge billing API reference