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Meta Usage & Cost Monitor

Switchbord now exposes two related Meta usage surfaces:
  • Insights → Billing (/insights, Billing tab) — reads Meta WABA pricing_analytics and analytics into local daily rollup tables, then shows messages sent/delivered, delivered-by-category, free vs paid splits, and approximate total charges in the WABA currency.
  • Settings → Usage (/settings/usage) — an operational estimate view based on Switchbord messaging data and campaign attribution.
Meta usage totals are operational estimates. Meta invoices, billing exports, and account-level Meta billing tools remain the source of truth for settlement.

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What Insights → Billing shows

  • Messages sent / delivered — from the WABA analytics field.
  • Delivered by category — from pricing_analytics category rows such as MARKETING, UTILITY, AUTHENTICATION, and SERVICE.
  • Free vs paid — splits FREE_CUSTOMER_SERVICE, FREE_ENTRY_POINT, and paid REGULAR rows.
  • Approximate total charges — summed from pricing_analytics.cost in the WABA currency.

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What Settings → Usage shows

  • Estimated Meta cost — calculated from delivered template messages and the configured rate table.
  • Delivered templates — chargeable template deliveries for marketing, utility, and authentication categories.
  • Read rate — read events divided by delivered template messages for the selected window.
  • Free messages — inbound freeform and service-window traffic counted separately from paid template delivery.
  • Spend trend — daily estimated cost alongside delivered template volume.
  • Cost by category — marketing, utility, authentication, and service buckets.
  • Campaign attribution — delivered template volume, read rate, and estimated cost per campaign.

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Windows

The dashboard supports three windows:
  • 7d — last seven days.
  • 30d — last thirty days.
  • MTD — current month to date.
Switchbord fetches each window separately server-side so the tab labels do not relabel the same dataset.

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Data sources

The monitor reads workspace-scoped data from:
  • messaging_events when events already include status, category, country, and campaign metadata.
  • messages, templates, contacts, and campaign_recipients as a fallback so existing workspaces can still estimate usage while richer messaging event payloads roll out.
Every query is scoped by workspace_id resolved from the authenticated operator session.

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Pricing model

Switchbord follows Meta’s post-July-2025 delivered-template pricing shape:
  • Delivered template messages can be chargeable.
  • Freeform service-window traffic is counted separately.
  • Rates vary by template category and recipient country/calling-code region.
The initial implementation includes an operational rate table for estimates. Keep the rate table versioned and reconcile with Meta billing exports before using the numbers for invoicing or customer pass-through billing.

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Campaign attribution

Campaign rows are derived from campaign_recipients.message_id and message delivery state. Use this view to identify which tourism campaign, re-engagement flow, or booking reminder is driving current Meta spend.

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Follow-ups

  • Import a complete versioned Meta rate table by country/calling-code and effective date.
  • Add explicit billing export reconciliation against Meta invoices.
  • Store richer status payloads at the messaging-event write path so fallback joins can be reduced over time.
  • Add CSV export for finance and customer success reviews.