Billing cycle

The billing cycle is how often a subscription charges: monthly, quarterly, annually, or as a single one-off payment. It is a separate question from the contract term, and the two frequently disagree, because an annual commitment billed monthly is common and leaving one part way through can still mean paying out the rest of the committed year.

The cycle matters twice over. It sets when cash actually leaves, which is what a forecast needs, and it sets the multiplier required to compare one tool against another: a monthly cost times twelve, a quarterly cost times four. Without that step a register of mixed cycles cannot be added up at all, which is why the annualised figure is the one worth holding beside the raw price.

On an invoice, billed annually means one charge covering the next twelve months, taken up front. Billed quarterly means four charges a year, billed monthly means twelve. That is the whole of what the phrase says: it describes how often the money is collected, not how long you are tied in. The length of the commitment is the contract term, which is recorded separately and can disagree with the cycle in either direction. An annual commitment billed monthly is the common case, and it still owes the rest of the year if you leave in month three.

The prices are rarely equivalent, so the choice is worth pricing. A tool at 90 pounds a month billed monthly costs 1,080 pounds a year. The same tool offered at 900 pounds billed annually is the same twelve months for 180 pounds less, but the full 900 leaves the account in one go and none of it comes back if the tool stops being used in March. Billed quarterly at 240 pounds is 960 pounds a year and sits between the two. None of those three figures can be compared until they are on one basis, which is what the annualised cost is for.

Billing cycle is a field on the record, one of monthly, quarterly, annual or one-off, and it drives the annualised figure the register sorts on and the dashboard totals: a monthly cost times twelve, a quarterly cost times four, an annual cost as it stands. A one-off cost carries no run rate, so it is excluded from annualised spend rather than counted as though it repeated every year.

The cycle also decides when the money moves in the Cashflow report, which charts payments on the dates they actually leave rather than smoothing them. A tool that is still renewing is billed on its own cadence for the whole horizon: the renewal date sets which day the payment lands on, not how many payments there are, so a tool billed monthly shows twelve payments across a twelve month window even when its renewal sits eleven months out. Lifecycle is respected on top of that, so a cancelled or expired tool carries no payments at all, and one with notice given, or with auto-renewal switched off, stops at the end of its current term. The Liability report takes the same commitments and amortises them evenly instead, which is why the two lenses answer different questions from the same record.