Usage Data Dashboard and overage calculations
Get an overview of your platform usage to understand your billing processes better, and learn how the Productsup platform calculates overages.
Introduction
According to the Productsup License Agreement, you get access to the platform based on specific service entitlement. If you exceed your entitlement and overuse the platform, you face additional charges for overages. The platform automatically calculates overages based on particular metrics.
This document explains the formulas used to calculate excessive use of the Productsup platform.
The Usage Data Dashboard overviews your platform usage and helps you understand charges and overages. The Usage Data Dashboard shows the essential metrics affecting bills, such as SKUs, Export channels, Sites, Users, and Syndication frequency overages.
The Dashboard is available in the Billing section of the platform, and only organization admins can access it.
You can also download the detailed usage reports in the CSV format.
To access the Usage Data Dashboard:
Select your admin profile menu in the top-right corner and choose Billing.
Select the Usage tab.
Tip
You can find metrics' meanings in the info boxes (ⓘ) next to each metric name.
Metrics of overage calculations
The platform calculates overages for the following metrics:
Note
Overage calculations exclude the sandbox project usage.
Max SKU or Offer
The platform identifies the maximum SKUs imported or exported daily for each non-manual site run for every organization or edition and calculates monthly overage. By non-manual run we mean that the site is triggered by scheduling, a trigger of another site, or API.
The formula for overage calculation is:
Overage = the highest SKU of a day within a month - your service entitlement
See the example of the overage calculations if the SKU entitlement is 5000:
Export channels
The platform takes daily snapshots of the number of your configured main and standard export channels for every organization or edition and calculates monthly overage. See Channel clustering to learn about different types of channels.
The formula for overage calculation is:
Overage = [the total number of channels within a month] - [your service entitlement]
Note
The platform doesn’t count the sandbox project’s export channels.
The overage calculations for the Export channels metric follow the principles of Channel clustering. See Channel clustering to learn how it works.
See the example of the overage calculations if the Export channels entitlement is 60:
Edition Users
The platform makes a daily snapshot of the number of users in each organization or edition and calculates monthly overage.
The formula for overage calculation is:
Overage = [the highest number of users daily within a month] - [your service entitlement]
See the example of the overage calculations if the Edition Users entitlement is 10:
Onboarding Catalogs
The platform makes a daily snapshot of the number of sites or catalogs in every Seller/Vendor Onboarding Module in each organization and measures monthly overage.
The formula for overage calculation is:
Overage = [the highest number of catalogs within a month] - [your service entitlement]
See the example of overage calculations if the sites or catalogs entitlement is 10:
Syndication frequency overages
The platform makes a daily snapshot of the number of syndications per channel in each organization and calculates monthly overage.
Warning
The platform doesn't count manual site runs triggered when you select the Export or Run buttons. However, if the manual site run triggers another site run, the triggered site run counts as syndication and increases the total sum of the syndication frequency count by one (1). To prevent the overages in this case, check the triggering settings of your sites in Scheduling. See Set up scheduling and triggering processes in Scheduling for more information.
The following example shows overage calculation.
Suppose the organization has three (3) active channels: A and B are from site 1, and C is from site 2. The Syndication Frequency entitlement is 1.
The following syndication frequency happened during January 2021:
01.01.2021: Three (3) syndication cases for channel A and one (1) – for each B and C channels.
02.01.2021: Two (2) syndication cases for channel A, one (1) – for B, and two (2) – for C.
03.01.2021: One (1) syndication case for each channel.
See the following table:
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The platform doesn’t count the number of syndications but only the fact of exceeding the entitlement per channel per day and sums up these daily cases for a month. In this example, the number of daily syndications with overages on 01.01.2021 is only one (1) because only channel A exceeds the entitlement. On 02.01.2021, it is two (2) as two (2) channels exceed the entitlement. And on 03.01.2021, there were no overages. See the following table:
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January overages equal the sum of one (1) exceeding syndication case on 01.01.2021 and two (2) cases on 02.01.2021, which makes three (3) in total for January. See the following table:
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Syndication Frequency Overages Details
You can view details of Syndication Frequency Overages per day:
Select a necessary month bar on the Syndication frequency overages graph.
Select a necessary day bar on the day view of the Syndication frequency overages graph.
The Syndication Frequency Overages Details table shows all sites that lead to overages. You can check the following metrics for each site in your organization for a selected day:
Overage
Export Channels
Entitlement
Syndications.
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On the Syndication Frequency Overage Details table, you can do the following actions:
Select another day.
Open the day picker drop-down. The red dots in the upper-right corner of a day indicate the days with overages.
Select a necessary day.
View the list of exports for each site and deactivate unnecessary exports to reduce overages.
Select a number next to the necessary site in the Export Channels column to get to the Export Overview page of the site.
Check the active exports and deactivate unimportant exports.
View scheduling of each site.
Hover over a necessary site line and select the View Scheduling button to get to the Site Scheduling page.
Adjust your schedule to match your entitlement. See Schedule your site runs in Site Scheduling.
Channel clustering
The Productsup platform uses channel clustering to calculate overages for export channels. According to it, there are three types of channels in Productsup:
Standard in green
Main in yellow
Sub-channel in red.
Standard channels
A standard channel is a channel that doesn’t have category-specific channels associated with it. It is the most common type of channel.
Examples of standard channels:
Google Merchant Center
Facebook Dynamic Ads
Pinterest Shopping.
To count standard channels on the site level, use the following formula:
[The same standard channel added N times] = N
Main channels
The main channel is not a category-specific channel itself. Still, it can include category-specific channels associated with it, or you can add a main channel multiple times to a site to manually create category-specific exports. If a channel has different templates for different countries, they all count as individual main channels.
Examples of main channels:
Amazon Vendor US
Amazon Vendor UK
FabDis.
To count main channels on the site level, use the following formulas:
[The same main channel added N times] = 1[N different main channels added] = N
Sub-channels
A sub-channel is a channel that belongs to the main channel and contains category-specific information. However, there might be cases where a sub-channel doesn’t belong to the main channel because there are no main channels in the site. In this case, the platform creates a non-global placeholder main channel and associates sub-channels with it.
Examples of sub-channels:
Amazon Vendor - Computer Bags & Cases
FabDis - 00 Cartouche.
To count sub-channels on the site level, use the following formulas:
[The same sub-channel added N times] = 1
[N different sub-channels belonging to the same main channel] = 1[Sub-channels from N different main channels] = N
Download the usage reports
You can download the detailed usage reports in CSV format. The reports contain information for one selected month with daily data. You get a zip folder named usage-report-YYYY-MM that consists of the following CSV files:
excluded sites with names
exports with names
max products with names
sites with names
syndication frequency with names
users with names.
Note
You can download the reports only for the months starting November 2022.
To download the reports, do the following:
Go to the Usage tab.
Select the download icon.
Select the year and month for the report.
Select Download.
Tip
If the CSV files show all data in a single cell instead of separate rows and columns, you may need to set a delimiter in the Table settings of your tool:
For Numbers on MacOS, do as follows:
Select the Table button.
Select the Adjust Import Settings…button.
Select comma (,) in Separate Value Using.
Select Update Table.
For Microsoft Excel, do as follows:
Go to the Data tab.
In Get & Transform Data, select From Text/CSV.
In Import Data, find and select your CSV file.
In Text Import Wizard, select Delimited and select Next.
Choose comma (,) or semicolon (;) as a delimiter and select Next.
Check if the preview shows all the necessary columns highlighted and select Next.
Choose the appropriate data format for each column, such as General, Text, or Date, and select Finish.
The Productsup Help Center doesn't bear any responsibility and accountability for the accuracy and relevance of the processes, features, UI elements, and other information mentioned in this tip instructions about third-party tools. The instructions aim to help you perform activities outside the Productsup platform.