FAQs: Billing and managing subscriptions for your Google Workspace account

Lauren_vdv · 06-01-2022 05:55 AM

Earlier this year, the Google Workspace Team hosted a series of “Meet the Expert” webinars designed to help Google Workspace admins make the most of your account and set your organization up for success.

This session focused on how to understand billing and managing subscriptions for your Google Workspace account. The experts covered:

How to view your subscriptions and licensing settings
An overview of payment plans
The payment cycle, grace period, and suspension
How to view your invoice and understand your charges
How to upgrade, downgrade, purchase or cancel your subscription

In case you missed it, no worries! We’ve documented all the questions and answers that were covered during the session for easy reference.

If you have any questions that are not addressed here, please comment directly below and our team (or someone from the Community) can help you out. Plus, follow @AskWorkspace on Twitter to receive timely support and quick self-help tips.

How can I set up notifications that a bill is 1) coming, (2) due, and (3) past due?

The domain superadmin automatically receives a notification when the monthly invoice is issued and when the automatic payment succeeds or fails. All invoices are issued on the first day of every calendar month and an automatic payment will be triggered on the second day of the month. You can also add more payments contacts that will receive notifications about invoices and payments through emails in the Payments Account settings as shown earlier during the demo.

I would like to keep the Domain but I am not ready to dive into using the Workspace features. Could Workspace be removed from the monthly charge?

You can cancel your Google Workspace subscription at any time and keep your domain registration. You and your users won't have access to Google Workspace products but the domain superadmin will be able to log into the Admin Console and manage the Domain Registration subscription, including renewal options and payments.

I canceled the subscription during the trial, when will I get my refund?

During the trial period, you're not charged for the Workspace subscription. The amount you got charged during the trial is for the domain registration, and even after you cancel the Workspace subscription, the domain you registered is still yours for a year. If you want to know more details about this, please check out our first webinar about setting up an account buying a new domain.

How can I have an advanced account with 5 to 10 users without migrating my 150 users from basic to an advanced account, since it would cost me a lot.

If I interpret this correctly, you want some users in your domain to have a different subscription. By default, Google Workspace doesn’t offer the ability to have multiple subscriptions in your account, so it means if you want to upgrade, all of the users need to be upgraded. If you have a specific business use case for which you believe this is the only option for you, you can contact the Google Workspace sales team.

How do I correct this problem with payment: “Your payments profile is currently suspended because some information on your account couldn't be verified."

Google always tries to ensure our customers' security and therefore, sometimes we need to verify your Payments information. When that happens, you are prompted to add verification documents for your form of payment through a form. You will then receive updates via email when your documents are verified. In this case, I would suggest you search in your inbox for an email from Google that contains the steps you need to complete.

How can I be billed annually instead of monthly?

At the moment, the flexible and annual plans offered by Google Workspace are billed monthly. However, you can pay a year's worth of service in advance all at once and the amount you pay will remain in your account as a credit that will be used through the year. After you make the payment you can download the corresponding statement. You can learn more about this option here.

For quick reference, here's an overview of the two different Google Workspace payment plans, Flexible and Annual/Fixed-Term:

	Flexible Plan	Annual/Fixed-Term Plan
Commitment	None	1 year or more of service for licenses purchased at the start of the contract. Note: to choose a multi-year plan, contact a Google Sales representative.
Billing cycle	Monthly	Monthly
Monthly payment	Business Starter: USD 6 per user Business Standard: USD 12 per user Business Plus: USD 18 per user	Business Starter: USD 6 per user Business Standard: USD 12 per user Business Plus: USD 18 per user
Yearly total	Business Starter: USD 72 per user Business Standard: USD 144 per user Business Plus: USD 216 per user	Business Starter: USD 72 per user Business Standard: USD 144 per user Business Plus: USD 216 per user
Add users	At any time for additional monthly cost	At any time for additional monthly cost
Remove users	At any time (reduces monthly cost)	Only when you renew the contract. Until then, you pay for all purchased licenses.
Cancel service	At any time without a penalty	At any time without a penalty

I feel confused about the state of my transition from G Suite to Google Workspace. My admin page says I’m all set up. However, I keep getting reminders in email and in pop-up messages in my admin account. Am I set? Do I need to do anything?

If you have a legacy G Suite subscription you need to upgrade to Google Workspace. You can complete the transition on your own by upgrading your subscription as shown during the demo and choosing the Workspace edition that better suits your needs. If you do not complete the upgrade, your subscription will be automatically upgraded to one of the available editions.

For individuals and families using your account for non-commercial purposes, you can continue using the G Suite legacy free edition and opt out of the transition to Google Workspace by clicking here (requires a super administrator account) or in the Google Admin console.

More information about upgrading to Google Workspace from a legacy G Suite subscription can be seen here.

We are a nonprofit charitable organization and we received that we have to make a payment for the coming year but we didn't pay last year because we are nonprofit charitable organization. Why?

Google Workspace offers a version for nonprofit organizations that is free of charge, but there are some additional paid services that you can purchase along with it to enrich your offering. In this case, you might want to check your current subscriptions to see if any of them is a paid subscription and the transaction history to view what are the charges in your account. You can also cancel your paid subscription if you don't need them. For quick reference, here's a comparison of the different Google Workspace offers for nonprofits.

Before we went to Workspace business, we upgraded individual users accounts with more storage. How can I confirm we aren't getting "double billed" now with our Workspace business storage for those users?

Depending on your Workspace subscription, your users get different storage options. For example, with Business Starter every user gets 30GB of Drive storage, while with Business Standard you get 2TB of "pooled storage" per every user added. Pooled storage is shared among all users in your account, for example with Business Standard a user might exceed the 2TB threshold, but the total storage used in the account cannot exceed the overall quota.

Drive Storage licenses allow you to get extra individual storage for your users if you have a Business Starter edition, but it does not increase your pooled storage quota. So if you upgraded to a Workspace Business Standard or Plus edition, you need to cancel the Drive Storage subscriptions to avoid extra charges.

To find out how much storage a user is using, the administrator can check the user account in the "Users" section of the Admin Console.

To find out how much storage your users are using with pooled storage, as an administrator you can check the Reporting Highlights in the Admin Console and find "What's the storage being used?" section.

Additional resources include: