The Usage-Based Pricing Playbook For The AI Era
Flat monthly subscriptions were built for software with predictable usage. AI broke that.
Consumption swings month to month, your cost to serve moves right along with it, and a fixed per-seat price stops matching the value the customer actually gets.
Maxio put together a free guide on moving to usage-based pricing without the billing mess that usually comes with it.
It covers the fundamentals, how AI products are creating brand new value metrics, and the practical part most guides skip: how to pick your value metric, run a hybrid model, and report usage in real time. It also pulls in the takes of three people who live in this world, Ray Rike, Ben Murray, and Todd Gardner.
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Hey Reader,
Are you ready to build the ultimate one-click dashboard?
I spent over 20 hours researching and building this thing. And honestly? It was worth every single minute.
It tells you everything you need to know about your business. Whether that is your revenue and gross margin, how you performed against your budget or prior period, or even compared to last year.
And the whole thing updates with one click.
Now I see this problem constantly when I review other people's dashboards.
Someone takes a data export from their accounting software. A profit and loss straight out of QuickBooks. And that is what they present to a stakeholder. Just that. Raw. Unformatted. Painful to look at.
Instead, this is how that same data should be presented. Look at how much more pleasing it is on the eyes. You almost want to just stare at it and feel happy.
And look, we are creatures of design. We like our food prepared a certain way. We wear clothing from specific designers because it looks a certain way. The data we present to stakeholders should be no different.
So I just put out a full video where we build this entire dashboard from scratch. Step by step. It is a long one, I am not going to lie. But we cover everything.
If you want to follow along, I put together the full template, cheat sheet, and instructions so you can build this yourself.
Let me walk you through what we cover.
This is where most people completely drop the ball.
They take a basic table. No color scheme. No font consistency. No thought into where things go. And they call it done. Without realizing that a few well-placed charts can completely change how quickly someone absorbs that data.
It is like showing up to a client meeting in pajamas. Technically you are still delivering the same information. But come on.
In the video, we start by choosing a color scheme, setting up our fonts, and carefully placing every single element. The headers. The KPI boxes. The chart placeholders. All the section dividers.
Because when a stakeholder opens your file, the design is the very first thing they notice. Before they even read a single number.
Now once the design is in place, we need to actually get our data ready. And this is where things start to get fun.
Here is something a lot of people do not realize.
Right now your data is in a format that is very easy to look at. Accounts running vertically. Dates running horizontally. Values filling the space in between.
Easy to read. But actually very difficult to manipulate.
So we need to restructure all of that into what is called a columnar table format. All your dates in one column. All your values in another. This is known as unpivoting your data. And honestly? It is one of my favorite things to do in Power Query.
From there, we load everything into Power Pivot. This is where we create relationships between our tables and build custom calculations called measures. Think of it as connecting your actuals to your budget, your departments to your accounts, your dates to your time periods.
And once those connections are in place? That is when everything opens up.
This is where it all comes together. And this is the part that blew my mind when I first learned it.
We build pivot tables directly from the data model. Then we create measures that tell Excel exactly what to display based on whatever you select.
Want to see 2023? Click a button. Trailing six months? Click a button. Year to date? You already know the answer.
One slicer controls everything. You pick the period and the entire dashboard recalculates. Revenue. Expenses by department. Expenses by cost type. Budget versus actual. Prior period. Prior year. All of it updates instantly.
That is what I love about Power Pivot. It is so flexible and so dynamic.
Now let's actually make this thing look incredible.
This is the fun part. This is where we take all that data and bring it to life.
Combo charts for revenue and gross margin. Stacked columns for expenses by department. Pie charts for cost breakdowns. Donut charts that light up green when things are on track and red when they are not.
We connect our KPI boxes so they dynamically pull the right numbers. We set up text boxes that automatically update with hit or miss indicators.
Every single element on the dashboard ties back to those pivot tables and measures we built earlier.
The result? A complete financial dashboard that updates with one click. No manual work. No formula errors. Just clean, professional reporting that is ready for the boardroom.
