Metering is how you track buyer usage of your software application in order to bill them. When you upload usage metrics (like resources levels, network bandwidth, and data storage) to Tackle, the metrics are directed to cloud providers who, then, bill your buyer.

As a vendor, you are responsible for keeping track of your buyer's usage and any potential overages. You can either do this internally, or hire someone to do it for you. When you use Tackle, you can submit usage metrics to the cloud providers and to track and manage metering for all your marketplaces in one place.

You can use Tackle to bill all of your customers through the cloud, or you can use it in combination with other billing methods, for example, simply to track overage. If you are using a third-party vendor like Orb to track usage, Tackle offers a native integration for submitting Orb invoices to the marketplace for metering. Other partners, like Metronome or M3ter, can also submit usage metrics through Tackle to the marketplaces with the Tackle API🔗.

With that, you just need to submit metering records to Tackle to track usage for that buyer. For each buyer contract, you can submit multiple records. Each record tracks a single dimension (for example, how many users are in your product during a certain time). Depending on how you gather your usage data and how your company handles billing, you can submit usage data to Tackle one of three ways:

Tackle supports metering for the AWS Marketplace, Google Cloud Marketplace, and Microsoft commercial marketplace. If you have an AWS meterable listing and an active contract on that listing, Tackle submits hourly zero quantity records on your behalf. It is possible to cancel your contract before the end of the subscription date. You must submit any outstanding usage within the allowable timeframe dictated by the marketplace. For AWS you have one hour, for Microsoft it is 24 hours, and for Google Cloud you have one hour after it was canceled with a timestamp of usage before the cancellation time.

If you accidentally submit the wrong dimension or quantity, you will need to process these changes with the cloud provider directly, but you can Contact Tackle Support🔗 for assistance in escalating this request if needed. If you miss reporting usage, follow best practice guidance from your cloud provider. For more information on metering see cloud provider documentation:

Filter and search metering records using the tools at the top of the page. You can also track statuses at any time.

In Tackle, click Metering in the left menu to see a list of metering records.
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Each card represents a single record and displays:

Use the search at the top of the page to search by details in the metering record (like company name or product name).

Use the filters to filter by marketplace, listing or creation date (which is the submission date).

Metering statuses show the current state of your submitted usage. This helps confirm if you have successfully billed a customer or understand why a record was rejected.

There are three ways to view metering statuses and reasons:

If a metering record is rejected, you'll also see it associated with one of the following error messages:

Next step: Create a metering record