Future Rate Plans and what it does to Monetization cycles

Google Cloud Apigee
1

We have some plans that we want modified. Basically the changes are to upgrade all “Rate Card” plans to “Rate Card with Custom Attribute”, and “Adjustable Notification” to “Adjustable Notification with Custom Attribute”.

In order to accomplish this, can we just set up a Future plan? And that will expire the old one and be replaced with this Future plan we specify?

It also seems you have to specify an effective date for the new plan. One option says this:

“Deduct the time spent on previous contract from new period, on effective date. The future rate plan goes into effect on the effective date. The time spent using the current rate plan is deducted from the renewal term of the future rate plan. This means that if a developer uses the current plan for 3 months, and the renewal period is reduced by 3 months.”

The above implies that there may be one shortened Monetization period until it can pick up again at its normal Monetization cycle (in our case, a 1 month cycle). But does their transaction counter end up being reset down to 0 on the effective date as well? This would mean all paying customers would essentially get free transactions for that one shortened cycle?

2

A Future plan replaces its “parent” on the Effective Date. The Rollover setting determines the Start Date for each Developer moving to the Future Plan, either:

  • Future plan’s Effective Date
  • Developer’s existing Start Date on the parent plan. In the API, this is “keepOriginalStartDate=true” on the rate plan.

The developer’s Start Date on a plan determines:

  • The “contract period” of the plan, as controlled by the Renewal Term. That primarily determines whether you are changed an Early Termination Fee for ending a plan.
  • The “counter period” or “cycle”, as controlled by the plan detail’s Aggregation Basis.

When switching to a new plan, the counters will be reset to zero, even if the new plan is a “child” of the old one. So yes, paying customers could effectively get free transactions with a shortened cycle.