Revenue Recognition for usage-based billingPrivate preview
Learn how revenue recognition works with usage-based billing.
The Stripe Revenue Recognition feature for usage-based billing helps with the revenue recognition process for businesses that use usage-based billing models. It allows you to recognize revenue that aligns with actual customer consumption, which can help provide accurate financial tracking and improved cash flow management.
Usage-based metered event 
No further setup is required if you have a usage-based billing metered event through Stripe Billing. Stripe Revenue Recognition automatically recognizes this revenue for you.
As an example, say you have a customer on a pricing model where it costs 1 USD per unit with a subscription for 100 units. They consume these units over multiple days and months as follows:
- 20 units on March 2
- 25 units on March 30
- 15 units on April 1
- 25 units on April 20
- 15 units on April 28
In this case, the customer consumes a total of 45 units in March and 55 units in April without being billed. The ledger entries for this revenue recognition are as follows:
Month | Debit | Credit | Amount | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
March | UnbilledAccountsReceivable | Revenue | 45.00 | Revenue in March from 45 usage units. |
April | UnbilledAccountsReceivable | Revenue | 55.00 | Revenue in April from 55 usage units. |
Billed usage-based metered event 
Based on your configuration, Stripe creates an invoice for the consumed units that reflects the recorded usage.
To continue with the previous example, Stripe finalizes an invoice on April 1, for a total consumption of 60 units. At the end of the month, the journal entries appear as follows:
Month | Debit | Credit | Amount | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
March | UnbilledAccountsReceivable | Revenue | 45.00 | Revenue in March from 45 usage units. |
April | UnbilledAccountsReceivable | Revenue | 55.00 | Revenue in April from 55 usage units. |
April | Revenue | UnbilledAccountsReceivable | 60.00 | The reversal of revenue with the April invoice for billed usage units. |