This page documents the Entourage demo environment: what it contains, what each demo account is for, and how to run through the demo end to end. Everything described here is reproducible against a Kill Bill deployment.

Overview

Entourage is the admin and billing-operations layer for a Kill Bill deployment. It is made up of three components, each answering a different kind of question.

Entourage components and the questions each one answers
Component Role

Kill Bill

The billing engine and system of record. Subscriptions, invoices, payments and audit history all live here.

Kaui

The account-level operations console. Used to search accounts, inspect subscriptions, read invoices and act on payments.

Aviate Admin

The tenant, catalog and configuration visibility layer. Used to see which tenant is live, what the catalog contains and how the environment is configured.

Kaui and Aviate Admin are complementary rather than alternatives. Aviate Admin answers environment-level questions; Kaui answers account-level questions. Kill Bill remains the source of truth behind both.

Note
 Entourage covers these three components — Kill Bill, Kaui and Aviate Admin. Aviate plugin capabilities such as API-driven catalog management, metering, coupons, wallet and CPQ belong to the Growth and Flock tiers and are not used anywhere in this demo. See Aviate plans and pricing for a full comparison of what each tier includes.

Demo scenario

The demo uses a fictional B2B SaaS company, Acme Cloud Analytics, selling an analytics platform on a subscription basis. Its billing and support team needs to:

  1. Understand which tenant and catalog are live

  2. Investigate a customer billing question

  3. Review invoices, subscriptions, payments and account history

  4. Resolve or explain common operational issues

  5. Confirm the system is auditable and production-grade

The demo is built to show that each of these is achievable by a billing, support or finance operator without engineering involvement.

Tenant: acme-cloud-analytics

Demo catalog

The catalog is a single base product with four plans and three add-ons, uploaded through Aviate Admin.

Products and plans

Product Plan Plan name in catalog Billing period Price Notes

Cloud Analytics

Starter Monthly

cloud-analytics-starter-monthly

Monthly

$99/month

Small teams

Cloud Analytics

Business Monthly

cloud-analytics-business-monthly

Monthly

$499/month

Main target plan

Cloud Analytics

Business Annual

cloud-analytics-business-annual

Annual

$5,000/year

Discounted annual

Cloud Analytics

Enterprise Annual

cloud-analytics-enterprise-annual

Annual

$18,000/year

Higher-touch customer

Add-ons

Add-on Plan name in catalog Billing period Price

Premium Support

premium-support-annual

Annual

$1,000/year

Extra Seats

extra-seats-monthly

Monthly

$20/seat/month

Data Retention Pack

data-retention-annual

Annual

$2,000/year

Catalog settings

Setting Value

Catalog name

AcmeCloudAnalytics

Currency

USD

Recurring billing mode

IN_ADVANCE

Change policy

IMMEDIATE

Change alignment

START_OF_BUNDLE

Cancel policy

IMMEDIATE

Billing alignment

ACCOUNT

Price list

DEFAULT
Tip
 The IMMEDIATE change policy is what produces the prorated invoice in the BrightBee Ltd scenario below. A plan change takes effect on the change date rather than at the next billing period boundary, so Kill Bill credits the unused portion of the old plan and charges for the new one from that date forward.

Demo accounts

Four accounts are seeded, each representing a different operational situation.

BrightBee Ltd — main support investigation

External key

brightbee-ltd

Purpose

The primary investigation scenario

Subscription state

Started on Starter Monthly, changed to Business Monthly mid-cycle

Invoice state

A prorated invoice covering the plan change

Payment state

Paid

What this account demonstrates: the subscription timeline containing the plan change, then the resulting invoice broken down line by line — the credit for the unused portion of Starter, and the charge for Business from the change date forward. This is the screen that answers the customer’s question, and it is the centre of the demo.

Northwind Media — payment issue

External key

northwind-media

Purpose

Payment investigation and resolution

Subscription state

Business Annual, active

Invoice state

One unpaid invoice, $5,000 outstanding

Payment state

Unpaid; a payment method is on file so the invoice can be settled during the demo

What this account demonstrates: the account balance, the unpaid invoice and the payment state. Then the resolution path — triggering a payment against the invoice, or recording an external payment — and the account returning to good standing.

Apex Robotics — clean happy-path customer

External key

apex-robotics

Purpose

Reference account showing a healthy state

Subscription state

Enterprise Annual, active

Invoice state

One invoice, $18,000, paid

Payment state

Successful

What this account demonstrates: what a healthy account looks like — an invoice raised and settled with no outstanding balance and no intervention required. Most useful as a direct contrast to Northwind Media, so an operator learns to recognise a problem account at a glance.

Delta Health — lifecycle example

External key

delta-health

Purpose

Subscription lifecycle

Subscription state

Business Monthly, cancelled

Invoice state

Invoice history retained after cancellation

Payment state

Historical payments retained

What this account demonstrates: that a cancelled subscription remains fully visible — the cancellation date, the subscription history and the invoices raised while it was active. Useful when a prospect asks what happens to billing data after churn.

Running the demo

The demo runs in five chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 are in Aviate Admin, chapters 3 and 4 are in Kaui, and chapter 5 uses both. Each chapter has its own Storylane walkthrough.

Chapter Focus Tool Account

1

Environment overview

Aviate Admin

—

2

Catalog visibility

Aviate Admin

—

3

Customer investigation

Kaui

BrightBee Ltd

4

Payment or invoice issue

Kaui

Northwind Media

5

Auditability and trust

Kaui and Aviate Admin

Any

Chapter 1 — Environment overview

Tool: Aviate Admin

  1. Open Aviate Admin.

  2. Open the tenant selector and confirm you are on the Acme Cloud Analytics tenant.

  3. Review the tenant details — tenant identity, and the Kill Bill version the environment is running.

  4. Review the basic Kill Bill configuration visible on this screen.

  5. Note the entry points from here into the catalog and into account operations.

An operator can establish what environment they are working in before touching anything, without reading configuration files or asking an engineer.

Walk through this chapter interactively:

Chapter 2 — Catalog visibility

Tool: Aviate Admin

  1. Open the catalog view.

  2. Review the product list — Cloud Analytics, plus the three add-on products.

  3. Open the plan details and confirm billing periods and prices against the tables in Demo catalog.

  4. Review the add-ons.

  5. Note the catalog effective date and version.

Catalogs in Kill Bill are versioned and dated. The effective date shown here determines which plan definition a subscription binds to, which is directly relevant to the proration explained in the next chapter.

Walk through this chapter interactively:

Chapter 3 — Customer investigation

Tool: Kaui
Account: BrightBee Ltd

The scenario: the customer has written in saying "We upgraded from Starter to Business and received an invoice we do not understand."

  1. Search for BrightBee in Kaui.

  2. Open the account overview — subscriptions, balance and recent activity.

  3. Open the active subscription and confirm it is now on Business Monthly.

  4. Open the subscription timeline and locate the change from Starter Monthly to Business Monthly, with its effective date.

  5. Open the invoice list and find the invoice raised on that date.

  6. Open the invoice detail and read the line items — the credit for the unused remainder of the Starter Monthly period, and the charge for Business Monthly from the change date to the end of the period.

  7. Confirm the payment status on that invoice.

Steps 4 to 6 are the substance of this chapter. The invoice is not an opaque number: every line traces back to a subscription event with a date attached, and the operator can explain the charge to the customer directly from this screen.

Walk through this chapter interactively:

Chapter 4 — Payment or invoice issue

Tool: Kaui
Account: Northwind Media

The scenario: an annual invoice has not been paid.

  1. Search for Northwind in Kaui.

  2. Open the account overview and note the outstanding balance.

  3. Open the unpaid invoice and confirm its status and amount.

  4. Review the payment state on the account.

  5. Resolve it — either trigger a payment against the invoice, or record an external payment if the money was received outside the system.

  6. Confirm the invoice balance and the account state have updated.

This chapter is deliberately about resolution rather than inspection. Step 5 is an operational action taken by the billing team, against the system of record, without an engineering ticket.

Walk through this chapter interactively:

Chapter 5 — Auditability and trust

Tool: Kaui and Aviate Admin

  1. On any of the demo accounts, open the account history.

  2. Open the invoice history.

  3. Open the payment history.

  4. Open the audit trail entries and note that each records who made the change and when.

Kill Bill records an audit entry for every state change, and the operations console exposes it. This is what makes the previous four chapters safe to hand to a non-engineering team: actions are attributable, and decisions are explainable after the fact.

Walk through this chapter interactively:

Reproducing the demo environment

To rebuild the environment from scratch:

  1. Create a tenant for Acme Cloud Analytics.

  2. Upload the catalog described in Demo catalog through Aviate Admin.

  3. Seed the four accounts and their subscriptions, then advance to a mid-cycle date and perform the BrightBee plan change and the Delta Health cancellation.

The resulting account states depend on ordering. Two details matter:

Important
 BrightBee’s prorated invoice requires the plan change to happen mid-period. If the change lands on a period boundary there is nothing to prorate, and the invoice will not demonstrate the scenario.
Important
 Northwind’s unpaid invoice requires the subscription to be created before a default payment method exists on the account. Adding the payment method afterwards leaves the invoice unpaid while still allowing it to be settled during Chapter 4 — Payment or invoice issue.

Kill Bill and Kaui:

Aviate: