Billing and invoices
Lob's billing is made up of three components for both our Print & Mail and Address Verification products:
- Subscriptions: Recurring subscriptions to access our premium technology platform. Subscriptions are billed upfront, either annually or monthly, at the start of the chosen billing cycle.
- Mailpiece usage cost & add-on charges: Pay-as-you-go usage charge for mail pieces sent, inclusive of printing, postage, and delivery costs. Usage is billed monthly at the start of each calendar month for mail pieces sent in the previous calendar month.
- Premium support charge (if applicable): Billed on the monthly at the start of each calendar month for that month's usage.
Once a subscription plan is purchased, it will renew automatically at the start of each billing cycle (monthly or yearly) unless you perform an upgrade, downgrade or cancellation.
Lob’s recurring platform subscription will be billed monthly or annually, depending on your plan. Consumption-based usage charges for mail sent via Lob will be billed at the end of each month.
- For subscriptions that do not start on the first of a month, monthly subscriptions for Print & Mail will be charged at a prorated amount for the first month and a recurring full monthly charge on the 1st of each subsequent month. Charges for mail pieces and add-on charges will be applied to your bill on a monthly basis.
- Annual subscriptions will be charged at the time of purchase. The payment covers the prorated amount for the current month and the subsequent eleven months. The upfront annual subscription fee will be charged every subsequent year. Charges for mail pieces and add-on charges will be applied to your bill on a monthly basis.
Usage counts for mailing volumes are applied based on calendar months and will reset on the first of each month at 12:00AM UTC.
Starting 2023, ensuring that your corporate billing address is on file and remains updated is an important step in accurately calculating your sales tax.
- Your billing address (in the Payment tab) is the address registered in your bank and listed to your credit card details.
- This is different from your company address (in the Account tab), which is the address that is registered to the company that conducts business with Lob.
- For SMBs or private individuals, the billing and company addresses may be one and the same.
Account administrators can add or edit their primary corporate billing address information at the bottom of the Payment tab of your dashboard settings, by clicking on the 'edit' icon to the right of the Billing Address section title.
Only account administrators can add a payment method in their dashboard settings. Lob accepts two kinds of payment types: Automated Clearing House (ACH) and credit cards.
In general, a payment method must be added to your account in order to use the Live API key to make live Print & Mail API requests. However, a payment method is not required for the first 300 live Address Verification API requests per month to the
/v1/us_verifications endpoint. After the first 300 verification requests, you will begin receiving errors with status code 403.If you are sending at high volumes, we recommend you set up electronic ACH payments. If you are spending over $2,000 a month, we will require that you to set up ACH.
For any future updates to your bank account (ACH) beyond the initial set up, you will need to contact [email protected] to change the bank account on file.
If you are sending checks to customers, you must also set up and verify a bank account under your profile's bank accounts section from which to originate your checks. Once the bank account is set up, see our Checks API documentation, or the mail piece designs on checks, for more information.
We accept the following international and domestic credit cards:
- American Express
- China UnionPay (CUP)
- Discover & Diners
- Japan Credit Bureau (JCB)
- Mastercard
- Visa
You can view your invoices, both current and historical, at any time in the Invoices tab in the dashboard as shown below.
- Invoice Summary will download an invoice summary for the select period in PDF format.
- Invoice Details will download a .csv file separating out the value of postage from the total sales price. (Note: Invoice Details is only available for invoices starting January 2023.)
If your primary payment method is an ACH account, you can pay an outstanding invoice by reaching out to support via email at [email protected] with your invoice number and stating your desire to recharge the outstanding balance.
If your primary payment method is a credit card, you can recharge your invoice directly by clicking on the “recharge” button next to the unpaid invoice in your Lob dashboard.
Note: the "recharge" option is only visible to Admins on your account.
In the Lob dashboard, under the Account tab, you can view any credit amounts issued to your account, along with their associated expiration date.
Any existing credit for the current month will be reflected and automatically deducted in your next billing cycle's invoice. This credit will be represented in the "Other Charges" section of the invoices, and listed as "Account Credit." This credit cannot be applied retroactively.
For Enterprise edition customers, Lob is able to address specialized billing needs by allowing greater flexibility to generate invoices that are more reflective of your Lob Print & Mail usage. This can simplify fractional charges between the different parts of your organization that send mail, and provide data-driven visibility that unlocks new revenue potential based on a “pay for what you use” billing structure.
Specialized billing needs may be defined by (but not limited to):
- Separating annual subscriptions vs consumption-based monthly usage charges
- Differentiating monthly usage between different cost centers or end-customers
- Examples: Different campaign objectives within a marketing team, different teams or departments, offices/entities located across multiple states, or white-labeling Lob
In order to simplify your cost calculations by customizing your billing structure, a detailed request should be made to your Customer Success Manager (CSM). Once this request is reviewed and approved by our Finance team, our team will be able to provide further instructions on how to modify your invoice and fulfill your needs at the start of the following billing period.
Refer to our API documentation for more information on creating flexible billing groups from the API. Customers with access to this feature can create a billing group from the Lob Dashboard here. If you are an Enterprise edition customer that is interested in enabling this billing modification, reach out to your Account Manager with request details.
Last modified 4mo ago