Your First 10 Minutes with Paid: From Signup to First Invoice

Introduction

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

1. Create your first Product with pricing configuration
2. Create a Customer to bill
3. Create an Order linking a Customer to your Product
4. Integrate Paid’s API to send Signals from your AI agents
5. Generate invoices based on usage

By the end of this guide, you’ll have a functioning billing workflow that collects Signals from your AI agents and automatically invoices your customers based on usage.

Before you begin, check that you have:

• A Paid account: Sign up at app.paid.ai to get access to the Paid dashboard.
• API Credentials: You’ll need an API key to integrate your application with Paid.

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Create Your First Product

A Product in Paid represents the AI agent or service you want to bill for.

1. Navigate to Products in the sidebar
2. Click Create
3. Fill in the product details:
   • Product name (required): A recognizable name (e.g., “AI SDR”). This appears on invoices.
   • Description (optional): What this product does (e.g., “Automates SDR outreach activities”)
   • External ID (optional): Your internal identifier for API integration
   • Product code (optional): Identifier for accounting purposes

Tip: If you have multiple AI agents (sales chatbot, support bot, etc.), create a separate Product for each so they can be tracked and billed independently.

Step 2: Configure Pricing

After entering product details, add pricing using the dropdown menu. You can combine multiple pricing types:

Pricing Options

• One-time fee

  A single charge when a customer signs up or onboards.

• Platform fee

  A recurring flat fee (monthly/annual) for ongoing platform access.

• Per seat

  A recurring charge per user or seat.

• Usage pricing

  Variable charges based on activity Signals—events your AI agent performs (e.g., emails sent, messages processed, API calls made).

• Outcome pricing

  Variable charges based on outcome Signals—successful results (e.g., meetings booked, leads qualified, tickets resolved).

Adding Pricing

1. Click the Add pricing dropdown
2. Select a pricing type
3. Configure the details (amount, billing frequency, signal event name)
4. Repeat to add additional pricing types if needed

Example: AI SDR Product

For an AI SDR agent, you might configure:

• Platform fee: $500/month base
• Usage pricing: $0.10 per email sent (activity signal: email_sent)
• Outcome pricing: $50 per meeting booked (outcome signal: meeting_booked)

Click Finish to create the product, or Save as draft to continue later.

Step 3: Create a Customer

Before you can create an Order, you need a Customer to bill.

1. Navigate to Customers in the sidebar
2. Click Create
3. Fill in the customer details:
   • Name (required): The company or individual name
   • Email: Contact email for invoices
   • External ID: Your internal customer identifier (useful for API integration)
   • Billing Address: For invoice generation
4. Click Create to save

Tip: Customers can also be created automatically via API when you start sending Signals.

Step 4: Create an Order

An Order links a Customer to your Products and defines the billing agreement.

1. Navigate to Orders in the sidebar
2. Click Create
3. Select the Customer you created
4. Add line items:
   • Click to add your Product(s) to the order
   • The pricing you configured will apply automatically
5. Set the order dates (start date, end date if applicable)
6. Click Create to finalize

The Order is now active. Any Signals sent for this Customer-Product combination will be tracked and billed according to your pricing rules.

Step 5: Integrate Paid’s API

Now integrate your application to send Signals whenever your AI agent performs billable actions.

Get Your API Key

1. Click on Settings (gear icon)
2. Navigate to API Keys
3. Click Create New API Key
4. Copy the key securely—you won’t see it again

Send Signals

Whenever your AI agent performs an action, send a Signal to Paid:

1
{
2
  "event_name": "email_sent",
3
  "product_id": "YOUR_PRODUCT_ID",
4
  "customer_id": "YOUR_CUSTOMER_ID",
5
  "data": {
6
    "subject": "Follow-up on our conversation",
7
    "recipient": "prospect@example.com"
8
  }
9
}

Use Paid’s SDKs for easier integration:

1
from paid import Paid, SignalV2
2
3
client = Paid(token="YOUR_API_KEY")
4
5
client.usage.record_bulk_v2(signals=[
6
    SignalV2(
7
        event_name="email_sent",
8
        product_id="YOUR_PRODUCT_ID",
9
        customer_id="YOUR_CUSTOMER_ID",
10
        data={"subject": "Follow-up"}
11
    )
12
])

Tip: Use external_product_id and external_customer_id if you prefer to reference your own internal IDs.

Step 6: View Signals and Test

After sending Signals, verify they’re being received:

1. Navigate to Signals in the sidebar
2. You should see your test Signals listed with:
   • Timestamp
   • Event name
   • Customer ID
   • Product ID
   • Any associated costs

Tip: Send a few test Signals to verify the integration before going live.

Step 7: Review Invoices

Paid automatically generates invoices based on your billing configuration:

1. Navigate to Invoices → Library in the sidebar
2. Find the invoice for your test Customer
3. Review the itemized charges—you should see:
   • Any fixed fees (platform fee, setup fee)
   • Usage charges with quantities and rates

If the invoice doesn’t look right, go back to your Product and adjust the pricing configuration.

Next Steps

You now have a complete billing workflow! Here’s what to explore next:

• Costs: Track your AI provider costs alongside revenue
• Blocks: Create embeddable dashboards to show customers their usage
• Plans: Bundle products into subscription plans
• Credits: Set up prepaid credit systems