Create your product catalogue

BillPro products represent the goods and services you offer to your customers. Before you can accept payments or create orders, you'll need to set up at least one product in your catalogue.

BillPro product types

The types of products you can manage will depend on your business model and merchant account.

BillPro supports four types of products:

1. Single Payment Products

   • For one-time purchases
   • Multiple products can be added to one order
   • Payments can be split into instalments

2. Instalment Products

   • For purchases paid over time
   • One product per order
   • Configurable deposit amount and payment schedule
   • If there is no deposit, you can register a card for future payments

3. Subscription Products

   • For recurring billing
   • Fixed price charged periodically
   • Monthly, quarterly, or yearly billing cycles
   • Options to apply fees/discounts to initial payment only

4. Metered Products

   • For usage-based billing
   • Flexible billing based on consumption
   • If there is no initial amount, you can register a card for future payments
   • You can submit or schedule payments of any amount at any time

Key product features

The key product features in BillPro are as follows.

Product Details

• Product name (required)
• Optional merchant product ID to identify the product in searches
• Product descriptions (short and long)
• Product images
• Internal notes (not visible to customers)

Pricing Options

• A base price in your chosen currency with optional automatic conversions
• Optional fees, discounts, and taxes, which you can set in the product or order, or customise in the order
• Ability to lock pricing to prevent changes in orders
• Split payments toggle for single-payment and instalment products
• Ability to lock payment configuration, for example, to prevent a single payment for an instalment product

Organisation

• Product groups categorise products
• Product units define increments
• Deactivate products to prevent their use in orders
• Search and filter products by name or merchant product ID.

Getting started with products

Your business type and merchant account determine the product types you can use.

1. Consider how you want to sell your products:

   • Will pricing vary by order? If so, you can leave pricing unlocked.
   • Will payment configuration vary by order? Can customers pay in full and pay in instalments?

2. Organise your product catalogue. See Create product groups and pricing elements.

   • Create product groups for faster filtering.
   • Define units of measurement if needed.
   • Set up common fees, discounts, and taxes.

3. Create your first product. See Create a single payment product.

   • Start with basic product information.
   • Set the product price to include tax. Tax will also apply to fees. Discounts will reduce tax.
   • Configure pricing and payment options. Add descriptions and images
   • Review and save.

4. Create additional products as required or edit your first product. Adjust the product configuration to suit your sales model, choosing from the following options. For more details, see Product configuration explained.

   • Create basic products with minimal information and customise pricing during order creation.
   • Set up detailed products with locked pricing and payment configurations for consistent selling.

User permissions for managing products

To manage product and pricing element configuration, users must have admin_user roles. You can create user accounts with other roles to prevent users from managing products.

See Manage users.

Pricing and payment configuration options

BillPro offers flexible pricing and payment configuration options. You can decide how to configure your products with these options.

1. Set pricing and payment configuration when creating your products. This means that users cannot change the configuration when creating orders. This makes sense if your price and payment terms are constant, and it can save you time and improve accuracy.
2. Leave pricing and payment configuration unlocked in your products. This means users can set them individually when creating orders. This approach gives more flexibility. But it also requires sales agents to perform more steps and accept more responsibility.
3. Use a hybrid approach to suit your range of products and selling styles. For example, you set a fixed base price with configurable payment terms. This approach balances consistency with flexibility.

Currencies

You may be able to accept payment in more than one currency. In this case, you can create a separate product for each currency, and maintain your products and their pricing. Or, you can create a single product in your base currency and BillPro will use currency conversions (either automatic or with your rates). See Configure currency conversions

Choose between single payment or instalment products

You may want to offer the same product with both single-payment and instalments. Here are some things to consider when deciding which type of product to create in BillPro

When working with the UI, consider the following points.

For single-payment products:

• The user can add multiple products to one order.
• The user can always split payments to create instalments, and configure the instalment payments.
• You cannot lock payments. If you lock pricing, the user cannot change the total amount and pricing elements. Even if pricing is locked, the user can still split payments in an order.

For instalment products:

• The user can only add one product to an order.
• If you lock pricing, users cannot change an order's total amount or pricing elements. If you do not lock the payment configuration, the user can still make a single payment in the order.
• If you lock pricing and payment configuration, users cannot change the pricing or payments. In this case, the user cannot take a single payment for an order.

See Create a single payment product and Create an instalment product.

Create products to use with the API

You can also create orders from your business systems and integrate with the BillPro API . This allows you to automatically set custom pricing and payment configurations. You control the pricing and payment configuration, and your sales agents process the payments.

When you create orders with the API, the order must always have the same purchase type as the product. You cannot activate or deactivate the option to Split Payments.

When you create orders with the API, you can set a new configuration if the product's pricing or payment configuration is not locked. You cannot select pricing elements (as in the UI), and you must always set an amount for each pricing element. If the initial payment will be 0 because there is no deposit or a large initial discount, you must set the correct pre-authorisation amount.

For more details, see Orders.