Recurring revenue, billed where the rest of the work already happens.
Plans, subscriptions, usage and invoice runs sit next to your customers and your ledger, so a billing run doesn't need a second system to reconcile against.
Subscription billing is in beta. Rate plans, subscriptions, metered usage, invoice runs, dunning and the revenue home all work today. Two known gaps: usage that arrives after a period has already been billed is not re-billed automatically, and cancelling a subscription does not raise a final usage invoice. Both need an invoice you raise yourself.
- Rate plans — six pricing shapes: flat, per unit, volume, graduated, metered and manual. Subscribe a customer to a plan and Cobalt warns you if a pinned price has drifted away from the plan.
- The subscription record — billed terms, usage for the current period, invoice runs, a Plan diverged badge where relevant, and Change, Pause, Resume and Cancel in one place.
- Metered usage — record usage against a subscription and aggregate it four ways: sum, max, last or unique.
- A revenue home — MRR, ARR, active subscriptions, net MRR movement, cash collected, in collections and at risk, on one screen.
- Card dunning — a board of failed card payments with a charge-now action and three automatic retries, three days apart.
- Recurring invoices and orders — invoices and sales orders generated on a schedule, with generation history and pause, resume or generate-now.
Billing tools sit outside the books. This doesn't.
Most small teams end up running subscriptions in one place and accounting in another, then spending the first week of every month making the two agree.
A subscriber is the same record as the customer you invoice and ship to, so recurring and one-off revenue land in the same ledger.
A dunning board shows what didn't collect, retries three times three days apart, and lets you charge a saved card immediately.
Advance billing creates a deferred-revenue schedule per invoice line, so money you have taken but not yet earned is visible rather than assumed.
You switch subscriptions on, not buy them.
Subscription billing arrives as an industry pack rather than a separate product or a higher tier.
Turning the Subscription pack on reshapes the workspace around recurring revenue. Customer becomes Subscriber and catalogue becomes Plans, the subscription areas appear in the navigation, and the home screen swaps its KPIs for MRR, ARR, active subscriptions, net MRR movement, failed payments and cash collected. Switch it off and the workspace goes back to the way it was.
Packs are free and available on every plan — they never cost extra, and they never widen your security boundary. A pack only surfaces areas you are already permitted to see; it cannot show a user something their permissions would otherwise hide. If you sell both subscriptions and one-off orders, the ordinary quote-to-cash flow carries on working alongside it.
Frequently asked questions.
What does Cobalt's subscription billing actually do?
You build rate plans, subscribe customers to them, and Cobalt bills the recurring terms on a schedule. On top of that you get metered usage, six pricing shapes, recurring invoices and recurring sales orders, a revenue home showing MRR and ARR, a card dunning board, a self-service page for buyers, and deferred-revenue schedules per invoice line.
The module is in beta — what does that mean here specifically?
It means the shipped parts work but two gaps are still open. Usage that arrives late, after a period has already been billed, is not automatically re-billed. And cancelling a subscription does not produce a final usage invoice. In both cases you raise the invoice yourself. We would rather name those than have you find them in month two.
Does it handle revenue recognition?
Partly, and it is worth being precise. Advance billing creates a deferred-revenue schedule for each invoice line, so you can see what has been billed but not yet earned. What Cobalt does not do is full ASC 606 or IFRS 15 treatment — there are no performance obligations, no deferred-revenue waterfall and no remaining-performance-obligation report. Revenue is also not reversed automatically on a credit note; that currently needs a manual journal.
Can I bill on metered usage?
Yes. You record usage events against a subscription and Cobalt aggregates them for the period by sum, max, last or unique, then bills the metered part of the plan. The usage for the current period is visible on the subscription record as it accrues, so an invoice is never the first time you see the number.
How do card payments and failed payments work?
Cards only, taken through a payment provider. Card details are captured on the provider's own hosted page, so the application never sees them. Buyers get a self-service subscription page with their saved cards. When a payment fails it lands on the dunning board, which retries three times at three-day intervals and gives you a charge-now action in the meantime.
Which plan do I need for subscription billing?
Every plan. Subscriptions are an industry pack, not a tier — packs are included at no extra cost on all plans, and you switch the Subscription pack on when you want it.
Related pages.
Bill the recurring part properly.
Plans, usage, invoice runs and dunning in the same system as the rest of your trading — with the beta's rough edges stated up front.
Join waitlist