***

title: How Prolifi Works
subtitle: Platform architecture, core capabilities, and multi-team workflow
slug: how-prolifi-works
---------------------

For clean Markdown of any page, append .md to the page URL. For a complete documentation index, see https://docs.prolifi.io/llms.txt. For full documentation content, see https://docs.prolifi.io/llms-full.txt.

## Architecture overview

Prolifi operates across five core capability areas. Each area addresses a distinct stage of the revenue lifecycle, and they are designed to function together as an integrated system.

```mermaid
graph TD
    A["Your Product / Application"] -->|"API calls & webhook events"| B["Prolifi Platform"]

    subgraph B["Prolifi Platform"]
        direction TB
        C["Monetisation & Usage Management"]
        D["Billing & Collections"]
        E["Loyalty & Retention"]
        F["Global Expansion"]
        G["Revenue Recognition, Analytics & Reporting"]
    end

    B --> H["Payment Gateways / Tax Providers"]
    B --> I["Accounting Systems / ERP / Reporting Tools"]
```

***

## The five core capability areas

### Monetisation & Usage Management

Covers everything related to defining what you sell and how you price it.

* **Product catalog:** Define products, product groups, plans, features, and add-ons. Structure your offerings from a single product to a complex multi-tier catalog with hundreds of SKUs.
* **Pricing models:** Configure any of eight pricing model types. Attach different pricing to the same product for different markets, currencies, or customer segments. [See Glossary: Pricing & Subscription Terms](/glossary/pricing-subscription-terms)
* **Entitlement management:** Define what a customer is entitled to access or consume based on the plan they are on. Control variable, expirable, carry-over, and auto-extending entitlements. [See Entitlement Management](/billing-pricing/entitlement-management)
* **Usage tracking:** Ingest usage events via API or event stream. Aggregate usage against billing periods or entitlement limits.

### Billing & Collections

Covers everything related to generating invoices and collecting payment.

* **Billing models:** Support seven distinct billing models — one-off, recurring, instalment, usage-based, pay-as-you-go, pre-paid credit, and hybrid. [See Billing Models](/billing-pricing/billing-models)
* **Automated invoicing:** Generate invoices automatically based on subscription events, billing period close, or on-demand triggers.
* **Proration:** Automatically calculate credits and charges for mid-cycle plan changes, upgrades, and downgrades. [See Glossary: Billing Terms](/glossary/billing-terms)
* **Billing operations:** Manage invoices, credit notes, refunds, and adjustments from a single operational interface.
* **Offline payments:** Record and reconcile payments made outside of automated collection channels.

### Loyalty & Retention

Covers everything related to retaining customers and recovering at-risk revenue.

* **Customer portal:** A hosted portal where customers manage their own subscriptions, update payment methods, and view billing history. Available as a hosted Prolifi portal or fully customisable via API.
* **Dunning & payment recovery:** Configurable retry schedules, recovery emails, and subscription outcome logic for failed payments. [See Dunning & Payment Recovery](/payments-recovery/dunning-payment-recovery)
* **Cancellation pages:** Intervention flows presented to customers at the point of cancellation — offer discounts, pauses, or alternatives before the subscription ends. [See Cancellation & Retention](/payments-recovery/cancellation-retention)
* **Subscription pause & cancel:** Allow customers to pause subscriptions rather than cancel. Configure pause duration, entitlement behaviour during pause, and re-activation flows.
* **Loyalty schemes & discounts:** Create loyalty programmes, issue promotional credits, and configure one-to-one, one-to-many, and targeted discount structures.

### Global Expansion

Covers everything related to operating across multiple countries and currencies.

* **Operating entities:** Define separate legal entities per country. All billing, tax, and reporting flows from the correct entity context. [See Glossary: Platform Concepts](/glossary/platform-concepts)
* **Multi-currency pricing:** Configure per-currency prices for every plan. Manage exchange rate behaviour and rounding rules.
* **Local payment methods:** Support the payment methods that customers in each market actually use.
* **Tax management:** Choose between three tax management modes — self-calculated, Prolifi Tax (native engine), or third-party integration (e.g., Avalara, TaxJar). [See Tax Management](/global-operations/tax-management)
* **Cross-border collection:** Route payment collection through the correct entity and gateway for each collection country. [See Multi-Country Setup](/global-operations/multi-country-setup)

### Revenue Recognition, Analytics & Reporting

Covers everything related to turning transaction data into financial insight and compliant reporting.

* **Revenue recognition:** Generate recognition schedules per invoice. Configure deferred versus immediate recognition per product. Supports accounting standards including ASC 606 and IFRS 15. [See Revenue Recognition](/reporting/revenue-recognition)
* **Regulation-grade reporting:** Period-end reports formatted for accounting and compliance requirements. [See Financial Reports](/reporting/financial-reports)
* **Reconciliation:** Match payment gateway settlement records to Prolifi invoice records. Surface discrepancies for review. [See Reconciliation Workflows](/reporting/reconciliation-workflows)
* **Audit trails:** Complete, immutable records of every invoice, transaction, and billing event.
* **Financial metrics:** MRR, ARR, NRR, ARPU, churn rate, expansion revenue, contraction revenue — all derived from live billing data. [See Glossary: Reporting & Global Terms](/glossary/reporting-global-terms)

***

## Prolifi as a multi-team platform

Prolifi is not configured or operated by one team. Different functions within your organisation interact with the platform at different stages and for different purposes. Understanding each team's role prevents configuration gaps and ensures that the setup decisions made early in your implementation remain coherent as more teams engage with the platform.

### Marketing & Strategy Teams

**Role:** Define the revenue model and translate it into platform configuration.

Marketing and Strategy teams are typically the first to engage with Prolifi, because the platform must reflect your commercial strategy before anyone else can use it. This includes:

* Defining what you are selling (products, features, add-ons)
* Defining how you are pricing it (pricing model selection)
* Defining who you are selling to (customer segments, packaging)
* Defining where you are selling (markets, currencies)
* Designing the acquisition strategy (discounts, price ramps, promotional mechanics)

The decisions made at this stage flow downstream into every other team's configuration. A pricing model selected by Marketing determines what the Sales team sees in Prolifi, what the Developer team integrates, and what the Finance team reconciles.

**Primary documentation:** [Getting Started: Marketing & Strategy](/getting-started/marketing-strategy)

### Sales Teams

**Role:** Understand and communicate Prolifi's product catalog to prospects, and manage quote and subscription creation for customers.

Sales teams interact with Prolifi primarily through:

* Viewing and understanding the product catalog (what is available, how it is priced, what the upgrade paths are)
* Navigating the customer module to understand existing subscriptions, billing history, and upsell opportunities
* Creating and managing quotes, including approval workflows
* Setting up customer-specific pricing, discounts, and contracts

Sales teams typically do not configure the platform itself — they operate within the configuration established by Marketing & Strategy and Finance teams.

**Primary documentation:** [Getting Started: Sales](/getting-started/sales)

### Developer Teams

**Role:** Integrate Prolifi's API into the product or service being monetised.

Developers interact with Prolifi primarily through its REST API and webhook event stream. Their responsibilities include:

* Integrating customer data (creating and syncing customer records)
* Setting up usage tracking (sending usage events to Prolifi for metering)
* Integrating payment collection flows
* Integrating payment links and hosted payment pages
* Integrating the customer portal or building a self-hosted portal via API
* Integrating the cancellation workflow
* Handling webhook events to keep the application state in sync with billing state

<Note>
  API Reference documentation and sandbox environment access are coming soon. The Developer Getting Started guide covers the integration architecture and approach at a conceptual level.
</Note>

**Primary documentation:** [Getting Started: Developers](/getting-started/developers)

### Account & Finance Teams

**Role:** Configure billing operations, manage billing artefacts, run reconciliation, and produce financial reports.

Finance teams interact with Prolifi as the operational billing system of record. Their responsibilities include:

* Configuring payment collection preferences and billing settings
* Managing invoices, credit notes, transactions, and refunds
* Running the dunning configuration and monitoring payment recovery
* Executing the reconciliation workflow (matching gateway settlements to Prolifi records)
* Running revenue recognition and financial reporting
* Managing operational preferences (users, roles, approval workflows, notification emails)

**Primary documentation:** [Getting Started: Finance](/getting-started/finance)

***

## The six-phase platform workflow

All Getting Started guides are structured in the logical sequence through which a customer configures and operates Prolifi. Understanding this sequence is important before diving into any specific guide, because each phase depends on the previous one being complete.

| Phase | Name                            | What happens                                                                                         |
| ----- | ------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 1     | Platform Initialisation         | Account setup, operating entities, payment gateway connections, tax settings, communication settings |
| 2     | Product & Pricing Configuration | Product catalog creation, pricing plans, entitlement definitions, discount rules                     |
| 3     | Customer Onboarding             | Customer record creation, payment method attachment, subscription creation, entitlement provisioning |
| 4     | Customer Lifecycle Events       | Upgrades, downgrades, pauses, resumes, cancellations, reactivations                                  |
| 5     | Billing Cycle                   | Usage collection, invoice generation, payment collection, dunning, offline payments, credit notes    |
| 6     | Reporting & Reconciliation      | Revenue recognition, reconciliation, financial reporting, regulation-grade reports                   |

<Warning>
  Steps within the platform are sequentially dependent. For example, you cannot create a subscription without a product, a pricing plan, a customer record, and a connected payment gateway all existing first. Each Getting Started guide surfaces the relevant prerequisites at the start of each section.
</Warning>