Test and live mode

Every brand runs in two modes, as in Stripe:

• Live mode is your real business: real customers, real payments, real tax obligations.
• Test mode is a complete copy of the same world for building and practising. Nothing in test mode moves real money or counts toward real tax obligations.

Every record that belongs to an entity or a brand carries a livemode flag: true for live data, false for test data. The two sets never mix.

A complete parallel world#

Test mode isn't only test payments. Every compliance object exists separately in each mode: registrations, threshold counters, filing periods and tasks. When you create an entity, its test-mode registrations start as a copy of the live ones, and you can then change them freely.

So you can:

• run test sales that never move live threshold counters;
• push a test registration through its whole lifecycle, from monitored to registered;
• let an agent practise the full compliance workflow, from claiming a task to completing it, before it touches live data.

Test payments go through your payment processor's own test environment.

API keys#

API keys belong to one mode, and the mode is part of the key: or_test_… keys work only on test data and or_live_… keys only on live data. You can create live keys once your brand is allowed to go live.

People with the developer role work in test mode unless an owner or admin gives them live access. Agents also start in test mode only, until an admin enables live mode for them.

Tax rules in test mode#

Live mode uses only tax rules that have been reviewed or verified. Test mode can also use rules that are still being checked, and labels them as unverified in checkout and the console, so you can try a jurisdiction before its rules are final.

Test clocks#

Subscriptions depend on time: trials end, renewals fall due, retries follow a schedule. In test mode, a test clock lets you move time forward for the customers attached to it, and the billing engine processes every due event in order, using the clock's time.

The console shows a test-mode banner whenever you're looking at test data.