You can view or change billing and invoice settings in your dashboard, under Payment and Invoices tabs.

How Lob's billing model works

Lob's billing is made up of three components for both our Print & Mail and Address Verification products:

• Subscriptions: Recurring subscriptions to access our premium technology platform. Subscriptions are billed upfront, either annually or monthly, at the start of the chosen billing cycle. 
• Mailpiece usage cost & add-on charges: Pay-as-you-go usage charge for mail pieces sent, inclusive of printing, postage, and delivery costs. Usage is billed monthly at the start of each calendar month for mail pieces sent in the previous calendar month. 
• Premium support charge (if applicable): Billed on the monthly at the start of each calendar month for that month's usage.  

Once a subscription plan is purchased, it will renew automatically at the start of each billing cycle (monthly or yearly) unless you perform an upgrade, downgrade or cancellation.

Lob's billing cycle

Lob’s recurring platform subscription will be billed monthly or annually, depending on your plan. Consumption-based usage charges for mail sent via Lob will be billed at the end of each month.

• For subscriptions that do not start on the first of a month, monthly subscriptions for Print & Mail will be charged at a prorated amount for the first month and a recurring full monthly charge on the 1st of each subsequent month. Charges for mail pieces and add-on charges will be applied to your bill on a monthly basis.
• Annual subscriptions will be charged at the time of purchase. The payment covers the prorated amount for the current month and the subsequent eleven months. The upfront annual subscription fee will be charged every subsequent year. Charges for mail pieces and add-on charges will be applied to your bill on a monthly basis.

*Please note that usage counts for mailing volumes are applied based on calendar months and will reset on the first of each month at 12:00AM UTC.

Adding a payment method

Only account administrators can add a payment method in their dashboard settings. Lob accepts two kinds of payment types: Automated Clearing House (ACH) and credit cards. 

In general, a payment method must be added to your account in order to use the Live API key to make live Print & Mail API requests. However, a payment method is not required for the first 300 live Address Verification API requests per month to the /v1/us_verifications endpoint. After the first 300 verification requests, you will begin receiving errors with status code 403.

Automated Clearing House (ACH)

If you are sending at high volumes, we recommend you set up electronic ACH payments. If you are spending over $2,000 a month, we will require that you to set up ACH.

For any future updates to your bank account (ACH) beyond the initial set up, you will need to contact support@lob.com to change the bank account on file.

If you are sending checks to customers, you must also set up and verify a bank account under your profile's bank accounts section from which to originate your checks. Once the bank account is set up, see our Checks API documentation, or the mail piece designs on checks, for more information.

Credit cards 

We accept the following international and domestic credit cards:

• American Express
• China UnionPay (CUP)
• Discover & Diners
• Japan Credit Bureau (JCB)
• Mastercard
• Visa

Viewing & paying invoices

You can view your invoices, both current and historical, at any time in the Invoices tab in the dashboard as shown below.

If your primary payment method is an ACH account, you can pay an outstanding invoice by reaching out to support via email at support@lob.com with your invoice number and stating your desire to recharge the outstanding balance.

If your primary payment method is a credit card, you can recharge your invoice directly by clicking on the “recharge” button next to the unpaid invoice in your Lob dashboard. Please note that the recharge option is only visible to Admins on the account.

Redeeming account credits

In the Lob dashboard, under the Account tab, you can view any credit amounts issued to your account, along with their associated expiration date. 

Any existing credit for the current month will be reflected and automatically deducted in your next billing cycle's invoice. This credit will be represented in the "Other Charges" section of the invoices, and listed as "Account Credit." This credit cannot be applied retroactively.

Modifying your invoicing structure

For Enterprise edition customers, Lob is able to address specialized billing needs by allowing greater flexibility to generate invoices that are more reflective of your Lob Print & Mail usage. This can simplify charges between the different parts of your organization that send mail, and provide data-driven visibility that unlocks new revenue potential based on a “pay for what you use” billing structure. 

Specialized billing needs may be defined by (but not limited to):

• Separating annual subscriptions vs consumption-based monthly usage charges 
• Differentiating monthly usage between different cost centers or end-customers
  • Examples: Different campaign objectives within a marketing team, different teams or departments, offices/entities located across multiple states, or white-labeling Lob 

In order to simplify your cost calculations by customizing your billing structure, a detailed request should be made to your Customer Success Manager (CSM). Once this request is reviewed and approved by our Finance team, our team will be able to provide further instructions on how to modify your invoice and fulfill your needs at the start of the following billing period. 

Refer to our API documentation for more information on creating flexible billing groups. If you are an Enterprise edition customer that is interested in enabling this billing modification, reach out to your Customer Success Manager with request details.