Glossary: Platform Concepts | Prolifi

This page covers the foundational platform objects and concepts used throughout Prolifi. For other glossary categories, see: Billing Terms, Pricing & Subscription Terms, Payments & Integration Terms, and Reporting & Global Terms.

Add-on

Plain-language definition: An optional extra that a customer can purchase on top of their base plan. Add-ons are sold separately from the core subscription and represent incremental value — for example, additional storage, a premium feature set, or a higher usage limit.

Technical definition: A product entity that is linked to a parent subscription but billed independently or as a line item within the parent subscription’s invoice. Add-ons may carry their own pricing plan, billing model, and entitlement definition.

See also: Plan, Entitlement, Product Catalog

Billable Object

Plain-language definition: Any entity in Prolifi that generates a financial obligation — most commonly a subscription or a one-off order. Understanding what makes something billable is important for developers integrating payment collection flows.

Technical definition: A Prolifi resource that can produce an invoice. Currently the primary billable objects are: Subscription (recurring), Order (one-off), and Usage Record (for usage-based billing). The billable object is the upstream entity that invoice generation references.

See also: Subscription, Invoice, [Order]

Billing Anchor Date

Plain-language definition: The date on which a customer’s billing period is fixed. When a customer subscribes on the 15th of a month, the billing anchor date determines whether they are billed on the 15th of each subsequent month (aligned to subscription start) or on a standardised date for all customers (e.g., the 1st of each month).

Technical definition: A configurable property on a subscription that determines the recurring invoice generation date. Anchor dates affect proration calculations for mid-cycle changes and are used alongside billing period length to generate invoice schedules.

See also: Billing Cycle, Proration, Recurring Billing

Billing Cycle

Plain-language definition: The repeating period at the end of which a customer is charged. A monthly billing cycle means a charge is generated every month; an annual billing cycle means once per year. The billing cycle is set per plan and can differ across plans even on the same product.

Technical definition: The configured interval between invoice generation events for a recurring subscription. Billing cycle length (e.g., monthly, quarterly, annually) combined with the billing anchor date determines the exact dates on which invoices are generated. Billing cycle events include: usage aggregation (if applicable), invoice draft creation, finalisation, and payment collection trigger.

Customer

Plain-language definition: A person or business that has a commercial relationship with you that is managed through Prolifi. A customer record holds identity information, billing address, preferred currency, and all associated subscriptions, invoices, and payment methods.

Technical definition: A first-class entity in the Prolifi data model. The Customer object carries: identity fields (name, email, external identifier for sync), billing address, locale and currency preference, and relationships to payment methods, subscriptions, and invoices. Customers are identified within integrations by an external_id field that maps to the corresponding record in your application.

Entitlement

Plain-language definition: What a customer is allowed to access or consume as a result of the plan they are on. Entitlements control feature access — for example, a customer on the Professional plan may be entitled to 10 user seats, 100 GB of storage, and access to the analytics module. Entitlements are distinct from billing: billing determines what is charged; entitlements determine what is unlocked.

Technical definition: An entitlement is a structured record attached to a subscription that defines the type, quantity, and behaviour of a customer’s access right. Entitlements are provisioned automatically when a subscription is created or upgraded. They carry a state (active, exhausted, expired) and a consumption record (for variable and usage-based entitlements). The entitlement state is queryable via the API and is the mechanism through which your application enforces paywalls and feature gating.

For more on how to use entitlements in your integration, see Entitlement Management.

Entitlement Enforcement

Plain-language definition: The process by which your application checks whether a customer is allowed to do something before permitting it — for example, checking that a customer still has API calls remaining before allowing another request. Prolifi provides the entitlement state via API; your application enforces the paywall.

Technical definition: The practice of querying the Prolifi entitlement API before allowing a customer action that consumes an entitled resource. Prolifi does not automatically block actions at the application layer — it provides the state data necessary for your application to make the enforcement decision. The entitlement check response includes: current balance, limit, consumption rate, and expiry date.

See also: Entitlement, Variable Entitlement, Paywall

Feature

Plain-language definition: A specific capability or function within your product that can be associated with a plan or package. Features are the building blocks of entitlements — you define features (e.g., “Advanced reporting”, “API access”, “Priority support”) and then specify which plan includes which features at what level.

Technical definition: A product-level attribute used to structure entitlement definitions. Features are defined at the product catalog level and referenced in entitlement configurations. A feature may be binary (access / no access) or quantified (x units of access per billing period).

See also: Entitlement, Plan, Product Catalog

Grandfathering

Plain-language definition: The practice of keeping existing customers on their current price or plan terms even when you change the pricing or package for new customers. Grandfathered customers are “protected” from a change — they remain on the old terms until they upgrade, cancel, or you choose to migrate them.

Technical definition: A plan lifecycle state in which a pricing plan version is closed to new subscriptions but remains active for existing subscriptions. Grandfathered subscriptions continue to generate invoices at their original pricing. Migrating grandfathered customers to a new plan version requires an explicit subscription update action.

See also: Plan, Subscription, Lifecycle

Operating Entity

Plain-language definition: A legal entity through which you conduct business in a specific country. If your business operates in the UK, Germany, and the United States, you may have three operating entities — one per jurisdiction. Prolifi uses the operating entity context to determine the correct currency, tax regime, invoicing format, and payment gateway for each transaction.

Technical definition: An OperatingEntity object in the Prolifi data model that represents a legal business unit with a jurisdiction, default currency, tax registration, and associated payment gateway configurations. All invoices, tax calculations, and gateway settlements are scoped to an operating entity. Multi-country deployments require at least one operating entity per country of business operation.

For guidance on setting up operating entities across jurisdictions, see Multi-Country Setup.

Plan

Plain-language definition: A specific version of a product at a particular price and package level. If you sell a product in three tiers — Starter, Professional, and Enterprise — each tier is a plan. Plans define what the customer gets (entitlements) and what they pay (pricing).

Technical definition: A plan is a priced, entitled product variant that can be attached to a subscription. A plan carries: a pricing plan (the pricing model and amount), entitlement definitions, billing model, billing frequency, and trial period configuration. Multiple plans can exist under a single product, enabling tier-based packaging without creating separate product objects.

Product

Plain-language definition: The thing you are selling. In Prolifi, a product is a defined item in your catalog — it could be a SaaS subscription, a physical device, a service package, or an API access tier. Every plan, entitlement, and subscription in Prolifi is attached to a product.

Technical definition: The Product entity is the root object in Prolifi’s catalog data model. Products carry: name, description, category, status (active, archived, draft), metadata, and relationships to plans and entitlements. Products do not carry pricing directly — pricing is always attached at the plan level.

See also: Plan, Product Catalog, Entitlement

Product Catalog

Plain-language definition: The complete list of everything you sell through Prolifi — organised by products, plans, add-ons, and the pricing and entitlements associated with each. The product catalog is the foundation of everything else in Prolifi: subscriptions, invoices, and entitlements all reference catalog items.

Technical definition: The aggregate of all Product, Plan, and Entitlement objects in your Prolifi account. The product catalog is the upstream dependency for subscription creation, pricing calculations, and entitlement provisioning. Changes to catalog objects (e.g., archiving a plan) affect all downstream subscriptions and invoices that reference those objects.

For a detailed guide to structuring your catalog, see Product Catalog & Pricing.

See also: Product, Plan, Entitlement, Subscription

Subscription

Plain-language definition: The ongoing commercial relationship between a customer and a plan. When a customer signs up for your service, they are creating a subscription — a record that ties them to a specific plan, billing model, and pricing, for as long as that subscription remains active.

Technical definition: A Subscription object links a Customer to a Plan and governs the recurring billing lifecycle. A subscription has a state machine: trial -> active -> paused -> cancelled -> reactivated. State transitions trigger downstream events including invoice generation, entitlement adjustments, and proration calculations. A subscription carries: start date, billing anchor, current plan, applied discounts, and all associated lifecycle history.

See also: Plan, Billing Cycle, Lifecycle, Entitlement

Value Metric

Plain-language definition: The unit of measurement that your pricing is based on. For a cloud storage product, the value metric might be gigabytes stored. For an API platform, it might be API calls made. For a per-seat SaaS product, it is the number of user seats. Choosing the right value metric is a strategic decision — it determines how customers perceive price fairness and how revenue scales as customers grow.

Technical definition: The dimension along which a pricing plan scales usage or calculates charges. For per-unit, volume, tiered, and usage-based pricing models, the value metric is the billable unit. The value metric is defined at the pricing plan level and is referenced by usage events when recording consumption.

See also: Pricing Model, Usage Tracking, Usage Metric