Use this document to help understand the types of invoices you may get from Gladly and what to expect in each one.
Types of invoice #
There are four main types of invoices that you may receive from Gladly. The invoices you will receive depend on what functionality you are using and how you use your licenses. For example, you will not receive a Telephony Platform invoice if you are not using Gladly’s Voice Platform services and do not have an IVR.
- Subscription Invoice – This is for your subscription to Gladly and will be billed at the cadence agreed upon in your Order Form.
- Monthly Telephony Platform Invoice – Costs associated with your IVR and Gladly Voice services.
- Quarterly True-Up Invoice – User activity that exceeds the seat licenses you originally contracted for. True-Ups may also include charges for other product functionality, like Chat Payments and pay-per-use features, if applicable.
- Renewal Invoice – Upon renewal, you will receive a new invoice for your contracted seats or user months, as negotiated in your agreement.
Types of Users #
Gladly has four billable user types: Support Users, Task Users, Analyst Users, and Information Users. As an added benefit, you only get invoiced for Support, Tasks, and Analyst Users; all Information Users are currently free of charge. How do we tell the difference between these user types? We look at each user’s activity.
Support Users #
Users who use Gladly to communicate with a Customer or client. These are your Agent user roles.
- Examples include sending or replying to an email, chat, SMS, or taking a phone call from Gladly.
Task Users #
Processes and takes action on Tasks in Gladly and does not communicate directly with a Customer. These are your Task User roles.
- Examples include changing due dates, updating content, re-opening a task, closing a Task, or reassigning a Task. Task Users are billed at a reduced rate because they do not communicate with the Customer or client, but if they do, it’s not a problem! They will then be billed as Support Users.
Information Users #
Uses Gladly for administrative purposes only. These are typically your Team Manager, Administrator, and Compliance Administrator roles. If an Information User communicates with a Customer or processes a Task (see examples above), they will be billed as a Support or Task User respectively.
- Administrative examples include running reports, viewing Liveboards, monitoring Agent activity, submitting support requests, changing configurations in Gladly, closing/moving/assigning a Conversation, and applying Topics.
- You will not be charged if Information Users have these activities only. The critical difference between Information Users and Support Users is that the former does not take action to communicate directly with a Customer.
We evaluate your users compared to your contract monthly and then bill quarterly.
- If a user’s activity puts you over your licenses at any time during the month, you will see that reflected for that month in your quarterly True-Up Invoice. For example, if you hire a temp for two weeks during the holidays and this hire exceeds your contracted seat count, that is billed as a True-Up Invoice.
- Billing is not dependent on the roles or permissions you have assigned in Gladly (e.g., Administrator, Agent, Team Manager) except for the Analyst role. Roles are used to assign permissions to Gladly users, including giving Analysts access to Insight Builder.
- For example, an Agent user role cannot download or delete call recordings, whereas a Compliance Administrator role does have that ability. You can find more details on the permissions attached to each role here. However, we bill based on user activity. So, in this example, if an Administrator starts sending emails to your end-customer(s), they will be billed as a Support User for that month on your quarterly True-Up Invoice.
Analyst Users #
Analyst users can access Insight Builder to build and edit reports and create and share dashboards. They can also view and generate reports using Gladly’s out-of-the-box reports.
- The Analyst user role appears on the Users settings page once Insight Builder is activated. The charge for Insight Builder is based on a per Analyst role assignment.
- Super Hero includes one Insight Builder license (Analyst role).
- Insight Builder is an add-on feature that requires at least one Analyst user permissioned at all times to keep the feature active in Gladly. Refer to your existing Order Form for pricing details if you already have Insight Builder in Gladly. Otherwise, if you’re interested in activating Insight Builder, contact your CSM (if you have one) or fill out the Insight Builder Order Form. For more FAQs, see How do I activate Insight Builder.
- The Order Form includes the number of Analyst user licenses you can assign to Users. Unassigning the Analyst role from a user(s), leaving no user(s) assigned the role, does not stop billing for the number of Analyst licenses as contracted in the Order Form.
- Additional Analyst licenses may be assigned to users. It’s as simple as assigning the Analyst role to a new or existing user through Users settings.
- If the number of assigned Analyst roles exceeds the number of licenses in the Order Form in a given month, those additional licenses will be charged as a True-Up.
- Non-Analyst users who have access to reports (Team Managers and Administrators) can view shared dashboards without additional cost.
As it relates to invoicing, Analyst roles are tracked and billed differently than other roles in Glady. For example, Support and Task Users are billed based on activity. This means you’re not billed unless a Support user sends an email or a Task User works on a Task. Analyst roles, on the other hand, are license-based, which means you are billed for the license (per Analyst user) regardless of utilization.
Chat transactions #
Chat Payment allows you to complete sales by accepting payment over chat. Gladly charges $0.25 per payment transaction and is a line item in your fiscal-quarterly True-Up invoice.
Subscription invoices #
This is typically the first invoice you’ll receive from Gladly and includes fees for your Subscription to Gladly and any Professional Services fees associated with your implementation. You will be billed at the cadence agreed upon in your Order Form in the Subscription Terms & Conditions section.
Telephony Platform invoices #
Gladly bills you for the type and amount of communications platform services (e.g., Voice Platform Services, SMS Platform Services, and SIP Trunking Platform Services) you use. Invoices reflect the rate and the volume used for the month and are billed monthly. Sample charges include access to communications platforms and features, inbound and outbound calls, messaging with SMS/MMS, speech recognition in your IVR, forwarding legs, etc.
Voice Platform-related and messaging Platform-related charges are summed and then divided by the Quantity to calculate the rate. However, calculated into those Totals are some “non-quantity” items, such as campaign registry fees, which aren’t tied to specific # Minutes (Voice) or # Messages (SMS). These fees may include:
- One-time Campaign Registration Fee of $15
- Ongoing monthly Campaign registration Fee fee of $10
More specifically, what are these fees, and why you may see them in your invoice and possibly skew the per-message blended rate?
When you use SMS in your contact center, you must abide by various US and international regulations, largely related to Know Your Customer identification and anti-SPAM regulations. These require us to register our customers with regulators on their behalf. As a result, Gladly incurs costs from its upstream carriers. This incurs a couple of fees, mainly for brand registration and campaign verification ($15), which are one-time. Then, there is an ongoing, monthly Campaign Registration Fee charged for maintaining compliance requirements with upstream carriers.
These charges typically appear during implementation or whenever SMS is launched in Gladly. Particularly when you are new to Gladly, those fees may look like they’re skewing the per-message blended rate since there is often very little volume in those first few weeks.
Voice Platform Service
- Voice Platform usage rates are blended rates for access to the Voice Platform and Features and voice usage and are charged on a per-minute basis. Specifically, 85% of the Voice Platform usage rate is attributable to software services, and 15% is attributable to VoIP services. With regard to SIP Trunking Platform services, 57% of such charges are attributable to software services, and 43% are attributable to SIP Trunking. Specific rates are found here.
- Active call time — which includes callers being on hold — is billed per minute. Your rates also depend on the type of phone number you have and where you are calling from. Toll-free numbers incur higher per-minute rates than local numbers, and each country has a different rate.
- Voice Input Phrase rates used in certain IVR nodes are found here.
- If activated, Mobile Phone Number Identification charges are appended to telephony invoices. Twilio charges a per-lookup fee for the API that allows the automatic identification of mobile numbers.
SMS Platform Services
- Programmable Messaging costs in your Telephony Platform invoice show the total SMSes sent from Gladly, SMS API calls made, and the number of segments for all SMSes. Gladly Reports like the Contact Summary report show the total number of SMS messages sent, but it does not include a further breakdown of how many segments each SMS message breaks down to. For example, one SMS message that contains 480 characters (GSM encoding) is three Segments — each segment is charged the per message rate on the invoice — but the Contact Summary report shows that only one message was sent. SMS Platform services are charged based on a blended rate. Specifically, 50% of the such charges are attributable to software services, and 50% are attributable to SMS transmission services.
- See SMS UCS-2 and GSM encoding costs (Segments) for more information.
- A2P Registration fees
for each registered 10DLC number appear under the Messaging category in your invoice. - Although not an exhaustive list, SMS/MMS delivery failures caused by sending messages to landlines and invalid numbers incur failed messaging processing fees.
for each registered 10DLC number appear under the Messaging category in your invoice.Telephony Platform Services will include telecommunications-specific state and local transaction tax and state and federal regulatory fee pass-throughs in additional to sales taxes. These tax and fee pass-throughs are related to telecommunications-specific tax and fee obligations associated with Gladly’s provision of communications services. Specific information regarding the taxes and fees you will see on your invoices, as well as how Gladly calculates the same, are detailed in Gladly’s Tax and Fee Disclosures.
True-up invoices #
When you signed your Order Form, it specified a certain number of seat licenses or user months purchased. If, at any time during a quarter, you exceed that licensed amount, we charge what is called a True-Up for those extra licenses used. These invoices typically go out within the first week following our quarter-end date (Gladly’s quarters end on April 30, July 31, October 31, and January 31). These will be sent to the Accounts Payable contact noted on your Order Form.
One of our policies, which benefits Gladly customers, is that we bill these overages at the same price as your contracted rate—no premiums or fractional markups!
Renewal invoices #
Your renewal notice will be sent as you approach the end of your contract term, as dictated in your Order Form. Upon renewal, you will receive a new invoice for your Subscription to Gladly, as negotiated in your original agreement.
You will receive an email notification before your opt-out period (usually 60 days before your contract expiration) to inform you that your renewal is coming due. If you have any questions regarding your renewal, you can direct them to either your Customer Success team or the Finance team via [email protected]
- Invoices are sent from [email protected]. If you have any questions about the invoices you receive from Gladly, you can send them to [email protected].
- Contact or mail us at 423 Broadway 503, Millbrae, California. 94030.
