This edition of our quarterly series highlighting the latest improvements in SAP Subscription Billing covers a range of updates, from flexible subscription onboarding and smarter pricing logic to enhanced data privacy controls and more granular billing configuration. Read on to see what's new and how these changes can benefit your business.

 

Phased Subscription Onboarding with Subscription Ramps

Bringing new customers onto a subscription often works better when conditions are introduced gradually — lower prices or reduced quantities at the start, stepping up over time as the customer realizes full value. Subscription ramps make this possible by letting you define successive phases within a subscription, each with its own conditions, as agreed in a ramp deal.

Each ramp period can specify a different combination of:

• Product
• Product price (via rate plan or customized prices and discounts)
• Product quantity (via subscription parameters for license-based subscriptions)

Ramp periods are stored as snapshots. The item list in the Manage Subscriptions app has been redesigned to give you a clear overview of all snapshots at a glance, without needing to switch views.

 

The fields displayed in the item list depend on the ramp profile configured in the Manage Business Configuration app under Subscription Settings:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can create up to 10 ramp periods per subscription. Ramp periods are always adjacent to each other without gaps or overlaps. Once the last ramp period ends, its conditions remain in effect until a new snapshot is created.

Key capabilities

• Create ramp periods during subscription creation or while the subscription is in a pending state
• Adjust the length of ramp periods (pending subscriptions only)
• Edit ramp period content in effective subscriptions, including splitting a period to apply different conditions for part of it
• Delete individual or all ramp periods while the subscription is pending

Example

A rolling subscription for a printer has two initial 6-month ramp periods with decreasing discounts on the price per copy. The third ramp period defines the longer-term conditions with no discount. After the last ramp period ends, those conditions remain valid.

 

For full details, see Subscription Ramps.

 

Bill Consolidation Control at Subscription Level

You can now configure bill splitting directly in billing profiles using the new Split Bills by Subscription setting in the Manage Business Configuration app. When this setting is active, each subscription produces its own bill. Charges from different subscriptions are never merged, even when other aggregation criteria would normally combine them.

 

The setting is also visible in the Manage Billing Data app on the General Info tab of the billing profile:

 

This is particularly useful when customers require itemized billing per subscription for internal cost allocation, auditing, or contractual reasons.

Example

A corporate customer has multiple active subscriptions for different departments. With Split Bills by Subscription enabled, each department receives a separate bill for its own subscription, simplifying internal chargebacks.

 

Working Directly with Amounts in Pricing Logic

Pricing logic can now handle monetary amounts natively. You can calculate amounts, use them in conditional logic, and return them as price elements, all within a single price element specification. A new amount field type is available in the Manage Field Catalog app. Amount fields can be included in lookup tables and either returned directly as a price or passed on as a property to subsequent components in the pricing tree.

Three new pricing tree components support this:

• Amount Calculation: Calculates an amount based on a price condition.
• Amount Comparison: Compares two monetary amount fields (or one against the reference price property) and branches logic based on the result.
• Set Price Element: Returns an amount field as a price element.

There are three new components you can use to calculate amounts and build pricing logic based on them:

• Operator: Amount Calculation
  This component is used to calculate an amount which you can then use in subsequent steps of the pricing tree.
• Comparator: Amount Comparison
  This component compares the values of a monetary amount field to another one, or to the reference price property. It decides on different action paths depending on the result.
• Function: Set Price Element
  This component is the pricing tree component used to generate a price element by returning an amount field.

Amount fields can be defined as output fields in lookup tables, making them accessible via the Table Lookup component. Furthermore, amount fields can be used within the Execute Formula component for further calculation before returning a price element.

Results, including amount fields, are visible in the Analyze Pricing Documents app.

Example

A pricing rule applies a flat monthly fee stored in a lookup table, adjusted by a multiplier based on the customer's contracted tier. The Amount Calculation component handles the multiplication, and Set Price Element returns the result directly as a charge.

To find out more, see Pricing Tree.

 

Volume-Based Discounts on Usage Events and Transactions

You can now define prices based on the number of usage events or transactions, represented by the count of usage records. The standard fields cumulativeUsageCount and usageCount are now available for this purpose in your pricing configuration.

During usage rating, the number of usage records is determined and passed to the billing process. In the Manage Billing Data app, the consumed usage record count is displayed in the new Usage Count field. If cross-billing cycle aggregation is in use, a second Usage Count field is shown for the aggregated value.

Example

A bike rental provider wants to apply a volume discount only when customers meet two thresholds within a billing cycle:

• Monthly ride count: The number of individual rides taken (usage record count)
• Monthly spend threshold: The total value of those rides (aggregated quantity)

The discount is applied only when both thresholds are met. Using usageCount for the ride count and cumulativeUsageCount for the aggregated spend across billing cycles, the provider can configure a two-dimensional pricing rule. The resulting discount is calculated during usage rating and is visible to the customer on their bill.

 

Data Retention and Deletion Policies per Legal Entity

Managing data privacy across multiple legal entities within a single SAP Subscription Billing tenant is now more precise. You can configure data retention rules per company code, using SAP Subscription Billing's integration with the next-generation SAP Data Privacy Integration service.

What this enables

• Define multiple business purposes within the same tenant, for example, separate purposes for individual customers and corporate customers per company.

• Configure retention rules per combination of data controller (company code), data subject role (individual customer or corporate customer), and information lifecycle management object type (customer, subscription, or bill), with separate residence and retention periods for each object type.

• Use company code as the anchor for data protection processes, ensuring deletion and retention are applied per legal entity.

To include customers and business documents in deletion processes, a company code must be maintained on all relevant records.

In the Manage Business Configuration app, company mapping is now configurable on the Markets tab:

 

Example

A subscription business operating in both Germany and the United States needs to apply different retention periods for customer data in each jurisdiction. With company code-based retention rules, each legal entity's data is governed independently within the same tenant.

For full details on data protection in SAP Subscription Billing, see Data Protection and Privacy.

 

Billing in Advance Configurable Directly in Subscriptions

Managing recurring charges that are billed both in advance and in arrears previously required separate rate plans for each combination. You can now reduce that overhead by enabling users to set the Billing in Advance option directly at the subscription item level. To enable this, define the Billing in Advance setting as a parameter in a rate plan template. In any subscription item using a rate plan based on that template, users can then override the default value, choosing advance or arrears billing as needed, without requiring a separate rate plan.

The setting appears on the item-level Billing tab in the Manage Subscriptions app, using the parameter label defined in the rate plan template.

Example

A company offers a software subscription that is typically billed in arrears, but certain enterprise customers prefer billing in advance for budget planning purposes. Rather than maintaining two separate rate plans, the subscription manager simply sets the billing preference at the subscription item level.

 

Pricing Configuration Apps Now Available in SAP Build Work Zone

A quick but useful update: the pricing configuration apps are now accessible in the SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition interface. For more information, see Integration with SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition.

 

This wraps up the Q3 2026 update for SAP Subscription Billing. As always, the goal behind these features is to give you more flexibility and control, whether that's in how you onboard customers, structure your pricing, or manage compliance across entities.
We'll be back at the end of Q4 with an overview of the latest features. Until then, keep innovating!

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