Billable Spend report

What is the Billable Spend report?

The Billable Spend report provides insights into your per-message costs and carrier fees, helping you effectively monitor and manage your text message spend. With this report, you can:

  • Generate customized, on-demand reports, either as one-time snapshots or on a scheduled, recurring basis.
  • Get the data you need to manage your monthly text messaging budget, plan your messages, and anticipate monthly bills.

How do I generate a Billable Spend report?

Follow these steps to generate a Billable Spend report:

  1. Go to Reports.
  2. Click Generated reports.
  3. Click Generate for the Billable Spend report.
  4. Select a date range. If you want to compare the report to an invoice, use the invoice’s date range.
  5. Enter your email address.
  6. Click Generate report.

What type of data is included in the Billable Spend report?

The report includes a detailed breakdown of your per-message costs and carrier fees.

What types of messages are included in the Billable Spend report?

The report includes all campaign and triggered messages sent, as well as all messages received.

What isn't included in the Billable Spend report?

This report doesn't include:

  • Base fee charges
  • Shortcode fee charges
  • Email charges
  • Charges to meet quarterly commitments
  • Any credits applied to your invoice
  • Taxes

How up-to-date is the report?

There’s a delay of up to two hours for messages to be included in the report. For example, messages sent at 2:00 PM are reflected in the report by 4:00 PM.

How does the report match up to my invoice?

To compare the data in this report to an invoice, first generate the report for the same period as the invoice you want to compare it to.

  • The “Image Segments” and “Non-Image Segments” quantities on your invoice match the total MMS Segments and SMS Segments counts on the Summary tab of the report.
  • Similarly, the “Subtotal" on your invoice matches the Total Message Cost on the Summary tab of the report.

An invoice from Attentive with MMS - Usage Image Segments and SMS Usage - Non-Image segments highlighted with amounts matching the Billable Spend report in the image below.

A Billable Spend report from Attentive with the SMS Segments, MMS Segments,
  and Total Message Cost columns highlighted with amounts matching the invoice
  in the image above.

Additionally, the “Carrier Fees” cost line items on the invoice match the amounts shown on the Carrier Fees by Carrier tab of the report.

The Summary tab breaks down message segment counts and costs by Campaign, Triggered, and Received messages. Day-by-day details for each message type are available in additional tabs in the report.

How far back can I generate reports for?

You can generate reports from July 1, 2020 through the present. Reports don't contain any data for dates prior to this.

Why are some of my campaigns showing as two segments even though there are fewer than 160 characters?

The character count in the Campaign Spend Details tab of the report doesn't include the six additional characters added to message links (these characters are used to track subscriber-level engagement). It also doesn’t include opt-out language required for certain subscribers. Messages that include variables may also affect final character counts.

Accurate character segment counts are shown when you're composing and reviewing messages, so you'll know how many segments you're being billed for with each message.

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