Metering that reconciles
Usage billing fails between the event stream and the invoice. Counting each line against its usage records closes the seam.
Metered billing goes wrong in one specific place: between the events your product emitted and the quantity your invoice charged for. Everything else, rating, tiering, prorating, is arithmetic that either matches the contract or does not. The seam is where variance is born.
Verify before you bill
The fix is to make the invoice line answer to its own records. Duplicates come out before rating, each metered line is counted against the usage records it was rated from, and a line that does not match is held for review rather than sent. A mismatch holds one invoice rather than corrupting a run.
| Check | Catches | When it runs |
|---|---|---|
| Duplicate removal | An event counted twice | Before rating |
| Window boundary | Events counted in 2 periods | Before rating |
| Rated-total tie-out | A rating rule applied to the wrong tier | Before send |
See it in the product: BillingInvoices built from the signed contract, for seats, usage, credits and milestones.
Why zero is the only target
A tolerance for small variance is a decision to investigate nothing. Once a team accepts a fraction of a percent, the number that would have revealed a systematic rating bug is indistinguishable from noise. Zero is not perfectionism; it is what makes the next anomaly visible.
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