ChaChing

What is ChaChing?

ChaChing is a managed billing engine that replaces Stripe billing workflows with subscriptions, invoices, tax plugins, and real-time revenue analytics—built on open-source Kill Bill. It supports migrating existing Stripe subscriptions while continuing to process payments with Stripe.

Key Features

• Subscriptions & invoicing (recurring and one-off invoices): Generate professional, brandable invoices for setup fees or custom services, and manage recurring subscription lifecycles.
• Automated subscription cycles: Automate renewals and grace periods via an engine described as “set it and forget it.”
• Auto-proration on upgrades/downgrades: Handle mid-cycle plan changes with instant, accurate credit calculations.
• Tax, compliance & finance plugins: Use pluggable tax engines and custom rules, with support for connecting external tax providers such as TaxJar or Anara (as referenced on the site) and applying regional tax codes at the line-item level.
• Analytics & revenue metrics: Track metrics such as MRR, ARR, and LTV in real time, including event-driven visibility into revenue cohorts.
• Stripe migration toolkit: Migrate customers and subscription-related data with “zero downtime” stated for the migration process, using a workflow that connects via Stripe secret key and then imports dependencies.
• Developer experience components: Includes a testing sandbox and an OpenAPI architecture for building against standardized APIs.

How to Use ChaChing

1. Get started and connect Stripe: Provide your Stripe secret key so ChaChing can access subscriptions and related dependencies.
2. Select what to migrate: Choose either all subscriptions or a subset to migrate to ChaChing.
3. Switch hosted pages / billing pages: Replace your current hosted page with ChaChing’s (as described in the migration steps).
4. Review and confirm migration: ChaChing imports the dependencies so existing processes continue running, while you continue using Stripe to process payments and ChaChing handles subscriptions and invoices.

Use Cases

• Replace Stripe’s billing logic while keeping Stripe payments: If you want to move subscription management and invoicing to a different engine but continue processing payment transactions through Stripe, ChaChing’s migration workflow is designed for that setup.
• Handle mid-cycle plan changes with proration: For businesses offering subscription upgrades or downgrades, ChaChing’s auto-proration feature helps compute credits immediately during the cycle.
• Issue recurring and one-off invoices under a consistent template: Teams needing both automated subscription billing and one-off invoices (e.g., setup fees or custom services) can use the invoicing capabilities described on the site.
• Automate tax calculations for global line items: Organizations selling across regions can apply tax codes per line item and use a connected tax provider to automate global tax calculations.
• Monitor recurring revenue performance: Companies that track subscription health can use ChaChing’s real-time analytics for metrics like MRR/ARR/LTV and event-based cohort visibility.

FAQ

Does ChaChing replace Stripe payments or only Stripe billing? The site states that you can “keep using Stripe to process your payments” while migrating subscriptions and invoices so ChaChing handles the subscription/invoicing layer.

How does migration work? Based on the migration steps provided: you connect a Stripe account using a Stripe secret key, select subscriptions to migrate (all or a subset), replace the hosted page with ChaChing’s, and then review/confirm migration while dependencies are imported.

Can I migrate only some subscriptions? Yes. The migration workflow includes selecting all or a subset of subscriptions.

Is there a way to test changes before going live? The product includes a “Testing Sandbox” described as a mirror-image environment for iteration before pushing to production.

What tax providers does ChaChing support? The site mentions connecting preferred tax providers such as TaxJar or Anara, and applying regional tax codes (GST, VAT, Sales Tax) to individual line items.

Alternatives

• Stripe Billing / Stripe subscriptions management: If you want to keep your billing stack fully within Stripe, an alternative is continuing to use Stripe’s native subscription, invoicing, and proration capabilities without migrating billing logic.
• Other subscription management and invoicing platforms: Another alternative is using a different billing platform that supports recurring subscriptions, invoices, and proration, while managing whether payment processing stays on Stripe or moves elsewhere.
• Self-hosted Kill Bill deployment: Because ChaChing is built on Kill Bill’s open-source core, a practical alternative is running Kill Bill yourself to own the billing infrastructure and logic directly.
• ERP/accounting-integrated billing solutions: For teams that want billing tied closely to finance workflows, an ERP- or accounting-integrated billing approach can be considered, typically trading off specialized subscription workflows versus broader system integration.