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Customer management

For providers: customers, licences, trials and billing in one place.

Click a question to read the answer.

Who can see customer management?

Path Administration → Customer management

Only the provider. This is where the business with Aurora Hive Sales, Sites and Live comes together: who buys what, who is currently trialling, who still owes an invoice.

No customer ever receives this area. It only exists on the vendor instance.

What do the figures at the top show?

The situation at a glance: customer base, monthly recurring revenue, open invoices — and what expires in the next 30 days.

Whatever lights up in amber there should be called this week. The purpose of the view is not statistics but a call to action.

The figures at the top: customers in total, recurring per month, “To bill this month”, trials ending and licences ending.

How do I create a customer?

Via “+ New customer”. The company name is enough to start with; the rest can be added at any time.

One detail is worth entering straight away, though: the monthly price. It later drives the one-click invoice — without it, every invoice has to be filled in by hand.

What is the usual path from prospect to customer?

Four steps:

  1. Create the prospect.
  2. Start the trial — fourteen days with full scope, the time-limited licence comes with it.
  3. Send an invitation.
  4. If they buy: “Move to subscription”.

If the trial expires without a purchase, the case appears under “Tidy up” — with the decision about what should happen to the instance and the data.

What is in a licence and how do I change it?

Path Customer file → “+ Issue a licence”

Modules, token budgets and term are signed into the key. The customer instance follows them without you having to touch anything there.

This leads to the most important sentence in this chapter: changing a feature means issuing a new licence. There is no switch in the customer instance that unlocks a module — the way always leads via the key and the daily sync.

What happens if I revoke a licence?

Caution: The revocation does not take effect immediately but with the next sync, and it affects the entire customer instance.

The revocation takes effect via the daily sync. After that, the same staged model applies as on expiry: first sending and AI pause, and after fourteen days the instance becomes read-only.

Login, data access requests, export and unsubscribing remain open in any case. A revocation is not a lock-out.

How do I prepare billing?

Via the billing preview: it shows for each customer what has accumulated in the period and provides a file for the invoicing program.

Aurora Hive Sales does not write invoices itself. That is intentional — invoicing is accounting work with its own requirements for number ranges and retention, and it belongs in a program built for that purpose.

Can a customer instance carry our own logo?

Caution: SVG logos are rejected because they can contain executable parts. PNG, JPEG or WebP up to 512 KB.

Yes. In the customer file, brand and logo can be stored — how the customer’s instance should look. All of it is optional; without any details, the built-in look remains.

For the logo: PNG, JPEG or WebP, at most 512 KB. SVG is deliberately not accepted — an SVG file can contain scripts, and a logo is not a good place for them.

Brand and logo are saved even if no separate instance has yet been created for the selected programs — they are ready as soon as the time comes.

What does “Tidy up” do?

It collects the cases where the trial has expired and nobody has decided anything, and suggests what should be done.

Important: the watchdog does not decide anything by itself. It does not stop an instance or take one down. Both delete or interrupt customer work and need to be seen by someone who takes responsibility for it. It only makes sure that nobody overlooks it.

Instances are paused after a set number of days after the end of the trial; the thresholds are shown in the view.

How do I find a customer?

By status, product or free text. A click on a row opens the customer file with everything that belongs to it — licences, instances, billing, brand.

Searching by status is the most useful: it answers the question of who is currently trialling and whose trial is ending soon.

Can I extend a trial?

Yes — via a new licence with a later expiry. Modules, budgets and term are signed into the key; an extension is therefore always a new key, not a date you move.

The watchdog sends a reminder three days before the end. That is enough to reach the customer, and little enough that the reminder does not lose its effect.

A customer wants an additional module. What do I do?

Issue a new licence. There is no switch in the customer instance that unlocks a module — the way always leads via the key and the daily sync.

So expect a short delay: the instance follows it at the next sync, not in the same minute.

A customer uses several programs. How do I map that?

Via the customer file: licences and instances are attached there per product. Brand and logo are saved even if no separate instance has yet been created for the selected programs — they are ready as soon as the time comes.

In practice, this means: you can create the customer completely before the technology is in place.

Why should I enter the monthly price?

Because it drives the one-click invoice. Without it, every invoice has to be filled in by hand — every month, for every customer.

It is the one detail when creating a customer that is really worth it. Everything else can be added at any time; this one field saves time every month.

Can I see how much of their monthly limits a customer uses?

Path Administration → Customer management → customer → “Usage (reported)”

Yes. Each customer instance reports its usage to the vendor instance every hour and with every licence sync. It does not have to be reachable at that moment; the last reported status applies.

You can see this in two places:

  • In the customer file, in the “Usage (reported)” card, with a switch to the previous month. Below it, the real-time query is still available.
  • In the vendor budget, under “Usage per customer”, all customers side by side, with used amount, limit and share per counter.

Amber means from 80% of the limit, red from 100%. A customer who has never reported anything is shown as such and not with zero usage; usually their instance is then running on an older version.

Since search volume and backlinks were added, data queries are among the quantities in a licence. Unlike the other limits, which are intended as an emergency brake, a busy customer actually reaches this one. So it is worth looking at the column before a conversation about a bigger plan.

Is your question not listed?

Try the search — it covers all chapters at once. And if something really is missing here, let us know: in the program at the bottom right via “Report a problem”.