How Gradient Labs automated outcome-based billing on Sequence

Overview

Gradient Labs' AI agents are priced on consumption, with customers billed only if the agent delivers on agreed outcomes. Each agent meters differently based on its task, which covers everything from resolved support chats to outbound voice calls to disputes handled end-to-end. That means several usage-based products running at once, each with its own metric and tiered rates. Most billing tools have no way to represent that mix.

After raising their Series A in July 2025, the company was still running that entire model by hand, with 1 operator rebuilding each invoice from the signed order form and calculating billing amounts in spreadsheets every month. Sequence rebuilt the pricing with custom metrics, connected quoting through to billing and had the company live in the first week of January, giving them the tools they needed to scale while keeping their operations streamlined.

The Challenge

1. Every invoice needed to be rebuilt by hand from the signed order form
2. Resolution-based pricing recalculated in spreadsheets each month
3. No path from a signed contract to a live invoice

“I used to go back to the order form, look at the exact pricing and then put it into the invoice, so it was extremely manual. The two most time-consuming parts were pulling the usage data from our dashboards and calculating the amount we were billing from a spreadsheet. I needed something that could just automate the metering, invoicing and billing for our customer’s usage so I didn’t spend all my time on it.”

Chrissy Amor, Head of Operations @ Gradient Labs

The Solution

Quoting connected to billing with no manual rebuild

The old workflow went through a Google Doc, a PDF, a separate signing tool and a shared drive, then a manual re-entry of every custom pricing term into an invoice. In Sequence the sales team builds the quote, sends it as a branded order form with native e-signature and the signed quote converts straight into a billing schedule. That removed the handoff behind the third challenge, so a closed deal now becomes a live invoice without the team reinterpreting the contract by hand. Quote pricing, dates and status sync back to the HubSpot deal record for the sales team.

Custom metrics for outcome-based resolution pricing

Gradient Labs commits each customer to a use case volume per month but only bills the resolutions completed, priced across tiered resolution-rate bands, with a true-up charge when a customer comes in under the monthly minimum. Sequence built this as custom metrics that calculate the resolved rate and the shortfall against the monthly commitment, tied to each customer's billing schedule. Usage was at first sent by CSV to start, with a usage API from BigQuery as the next step, and the true-up charges generate automatically rather than being worked out in a spreadsheet. This directly addressed the monthly recalculation that had been the most time-consuming part of the process, while ensuring 100% accuracy on invoicing.

1 operator across the monthly billing run

Resolution numbers are only final on the 3rd of the following month, so Sequence draft-generates the invoices, lets the team bulk-recalculate and review them against a saved filter, then bulk-send once the usage is confirmed. Invoices sync to Xero as sent for reconciliation, payment status flows back and payment reminders run automatically. Multi-currency customers are handled per customer, with the correct bank details shown for specific-currency invoices. This is what lets a single finance operator handle the full cycle instead of hiring against the manual workload.

“Sequence has cut out the manual work around billing and kept us accurate across our consumption and outcome-based contracts. Automatically tracking usage and billing on the outcome has been immensely useful. As we grow, staying on top of collections matters, and Sequence has let our finance team stay lean and focus on more strategic work.”

Chrissy Amor, Head of Operations @ Gradient Labs