How to Configure Unified Electric Imp-Twilio Billing
Electric Imp customers’ usage and licensing charges will now be billed via a Twilio account. Twilio’s billing system will issue pay-as-you-go payments via credit card, or arrears payments via invoice. This is the case whether you are using other Twilio services — for example, Super SIM or Programmable Wireless — or not. This guide shows you how to set this up for an existing Electric Imp paid customer account.
This does not affect holders of free accounts, who therefore need take no further action.
The Twilio Account
If you do not currently have a Twilio account, you will need to create one for this purpose. This must be an ‘upgraded’ account, ie. one that has a record of your business address and a payment method assigned to it. Free trial accounts cannot be used for unified billing, but having created such an account, you can upgrade it by clicking the Upgrade link at the top of the Twilio Console screen.
Note For more information on upgrading a Twilio account, please see the Twilio Help site.
If your trial account has not yet been upgraded, you may be asked to upgrade during the process.
What is Billed?
Once it is connected to your Electric Imp account, your Twilio account will show usage and new devices’ one-time impOS™ license fees in arrears. Billing is triggered the first time a production device connects in a calendar month.
Cellular data usage and Super SIM’s active-SIM monthly fee will continue to be billed via Twilio as before.
For more details about Electric Imp billing, please see our pricing page or contact Electric Imp Support.
For more information on Twilio Super SIM pricing, please see the Twilio documentation.
How to Connect your impCentral Account to a Twilio Account
To enable unified billing, you need to connect your impCentral account to your Twilio account. You can do this in impCentral — just follow these steps:
- If you’re not already logged into impCentral, do so now.
- From the My Account menu at the top right of the screen, select Profile.
- Scroll down to the Twilio Connect section and click the Connect Account button:
- The process will now be handed over to Twilio, and you will be asked to log into the Twilio Console with your username and password. If you have multi-factor authentication configured, you will also be asked to enter a one-time code:
- If your trial account has not yet been upgraded, you may be asked to upgrade during the process:
- You will be presented with a list of the upgraded Twilio accounts for which you are owner or administrator: select the one you would like to connect to:
Note When you are presented with the list of accounts, you also have the option to create a new account. However, we do not recommend that you select this option at this point. If you would like to create a new Twilio account to which to connect your Electric Imp account, please do so before starting the connection process.
Twilio will initially create a trial account for you, but this can’t be used for connections. You must first upgrade it. To do so, you provide business details and payment information. It is much easier to do this ahead of time than to interrupt the connection process. - Twilio will ask you to grant impCentral access to your Twilio account’s data. We use this solely to pass billing information to Twilio. If you are happy to proceed, click Allow:
- You will now be returned to impCentral, which will inform you that the two accounts are now connected:
The link you have established routes your Electric Imp charges to Twilio for the purposes of unified billing. The process creates a Twilio sub-account, and you can view that sub-account’s SID in impCentral at My Accounts > Profile > Twilio Connect.
You can also view link details by logging into the Twilo Console and selecting Authorized apps from the Billing menu. Click on impCentral under Authorized Connect App.
Updating the Connection
If in the future you wish to connect your Electric Imp account to an alternative Twilio account, you can terminate the existing connection with either of these methods:
- Log into impCentral, navigate to My Accounts > Profile > Twilio Connect and click De-authorize this account.
- Log into the Twilio Console, navigate to Billing > Authorized apps > impCentral and click Revoke Access.
After you have broken the first billing connection, follow the steps above to establish a new connection. Do so promptly to avoid any service interruption.