Blog Guide

How to use the ReliPay operator panel

14 min read

The operator panel is ReliPay's console for the people who run the product: it's where you create Applications, mint API keys, configure authentication, design plans and coupons, connect your payment provider, and watch revenue come in. If the SDKs are how your code talks to ReliPay, the panel is how you do.

This guide walks a brand-new operator from an empty account to a fully configured application, end to end. We'll follow a fictional team — Northwind Labs, shipping a product called Northwind App — through every screen. By the end you will have:

  • a workspace with your first Application,
  • test and live API keys wired into your backend,
  • authentication configured — password, OAuth, MFA, and passkeys,
  • plans, coupons, and a connected billing provider,
  • the operational loop set up: revenue, end-users, webhooks, usage metering, team roles, and the audit log.

Before you start

You need a running ReliPay instance. Self-host with docker compose up (see the docs), or explore the hosted beta at panel.relipay.dev. Everything below looks identical in both.

1. Sign in and create your workspace

The panel greets you with a standard sign-in screen. If this is your first visit, use the sign-up link instead — creating an operator account also creates your workspace, the top-level container that owns your applications, your team, and your billing configuration. Northwind Labs is the workspace in every screenshot that follows.

  1. Open the panel URL and choose sign up (or sign in).
  2. Enter your email and a password, then verify your email.
  3. Name your workspace after your company — you can invite teammates into it later (step 13).
The ReliPay operator panel sign-in screen with email and password fields
The sign-in screen. Signing up creates both your operator account and your workspace.

Note

Operator accounts support the same protections you'll later offer your end-users — you can enroll TOTP-based MFA and passkeys on your own account from the panel's account settings. Do it early; this account controls live billing.

2. Create your first Application

Everything in ReliPay is scoped to an Application: an isolated pool of end-users, auth configuration, plans, and billing. One workspace can hold many applications — a marketing site, an admin tool, and a mobile app can each get their own, with separate data on shared infrastructure. The Applications screen is the first thing you see after signing in.

The Applications list screen in the ReliPay panel showing the workspace's applications
The Applications screen — every application in the Northwind Labs workspace, at a glance.
  1. Click New application.
  2. Give it a name (what humans see — "Northwind App") and a slug (the URL- and API-safe identifier — northwind-app). The slug is generated from the name; adjust it before saving if you care about it.
  3. Create it. You land on the application overview.
The new application modal with name and slug fields
Creating Northwind App: a name for humans, a slug for machines.

3. The application overview — your home base

Each application has an overview page, and you'll come back to it constantly. Three things live here:

  • Stat tiles across the top — end-users, active subscriptions, and revenue at a glance.
  • Quick start — a checklist that walks you through exactly the steps in this guide: mint keys, configure auth, add a plan, connect billing.
  • Configuration panel — the application's identity and settings, with jumping-off points to every tab.
The application overview page with stat tiles, a quick start checklist, and the configuration panel
Northwind App's overview: stats up top, Quick start to guide setup, configuration below.

The tabs along the top of the application — API keys, Auth, Plans, Coupons, Billing, and the rest — are the chapters of this guide. We'll take them roughly in the order Quick start suggests.

4. Get your API keys

The API keys tab is where your code meets the panel. Keys come in two modes, and the prefix tells you which is which:

  • rp_test_…test keys. Data created with them (users, subscriptions, payments) is stamped as test data and never mixes with production. Build against these.
  • rp_live_…live keys. Real users, real money. Revenue stats count live mode only.
The API keys tab showing test and live key pairs with rp_test_ and rp_live_ prefixes
Test and live keys for Northwind App. The secret is shown once at creation — store it then.
  1. Create a test key first.
  2. Copy the secret key into your server's environment (e.g. RELIPAY_SECRET_KEY). It is server-side only — never ship it to a browser or mobile client. Public keys are the ones that are safe in client code.
  3. Install the server SDK and point it at your instance: pnpm add @relipay/node.

Gotcha

The secret is displayed once, when the key is created. If you lose it, don't hunt for it — keys are rotatable and revocable from this tab, so mint a replacement and revoke the old one.

5. Configure authentication

The Auth tab controls how Northwind App's end-users sign in. Everything is per-application, so your admin tool can require MFA while your consumer app keeps sign-up friction-free.

The Auth configuration tab with password, OAuth, MFA, and passkey settings
Auth settings for Northwind App: methods, MFA policy, passkeys, and redirect URLs in one place.
  1. Email + password is on by default — set your policy here.
  2. OAuth: enable Google, GitHub, or any other provider supported via OIDC. Each provider needs the client ID and secret from that provider's console.
  3. MFA: choose the TOTP policy for end-users — off, optional, or required. Backup codes are downloadable, so a lost phone isn't a lost account.
  4. Passkeys (WebAuthn): toggle on to let end-users register and sign in with platform authenticators.
  5. Add your redirect URLs — the allowlist of destinations ReliPay may send users back to after OAuth and magic-link flows. Include your local dev URL now; forgetting it is the most common first integration error.

6. Create your plans

Plans live in the Plans tab and declare what you bill for. ReliPay has four plan kinds, and the kind changes the machinery behind it:

  • Subscription — recurring billing on an interval (monthly, yearly). The classic SaaS plan.
  • License — a license key is automatically issued when the plan activates, and your app validates it via the SDK.
  • Usage — bills against a meter you define (step 12): API calls, MB ingested, model tokens.
  • Credit — prepaid packs that draw down per use, backed by an atomic, idempotent balance ledger.
The Plans tab listing subscription, license, usage, and credit plans with prices and intervals
Northwind App's plan catalog. The kind column tells you what each plan bills for.
  1. Click New plan, pick a kind, and name it.
  2. Enter the amount in cents1900 is $19.00. ReliPay stores money as integers everywhere; there is no floating point anywhere in the billing path.
  3. For subscriptions, choose the billing interval.
  4. Attach entitlements — the named capabilities ("seats: 5", "api-access") your app checks server-side via the SDK to gate features. Keep them coarse; you can always add more.

Gotcha

Amounts are minor units (cents), always. Typing 19 creates a $0.19 plan. The panel previews the formatted price as you type — glance at it before saving.

7. Add coupons

The Coupons tab handles discounts. A coupon is either a percentage off or a fixed amount off (in cents, like plans), and you control where and how often it applies:

  • Plan restrictions — limit a coupon to specific plans, so a launch discount on the Pro plan can't be applied to Enterprise.
  • Redemption limits — cap total uses. Redemptions are idempotent, so a retried request can't double-spend a coupon.
The Coupons tab showing percent and fixed-amount coupons with redemption limits
Coupons for Northwind App — percent or fixed amount, optionally restricted to specific plans.

8. Connect a billing provider

ReliPay doesn't process payments itself — you bring your own provider account, and the Billing tab is where you connect it. Stripe, PayPal, and Razorpay all sit behind the same BillingProvider interface, so your application code doesn't change when the provider does.

The Billing tab with provider credential configuration for Stripe, PayPal, and Razorpay
Connecting a provider to Northwind App. Credentials are encrypted at rest; you keep your own provider account.
  1. Pick your provider and paste its API credentials.
  2. Use the provider's test credentials with your rp_test_ keys and its live credentials for production — the modes pair up.
  3. Register the provider's webhooks so payment events flow back into ReliPay — for Stripe and PayPal this is one click from the panel.

Note

Credentials are encrypted at rest, and they're configured per application — Northwind Labs could route one app through Stripe and another through Razorpay from the same workspace.

9. Watch revenue come in

Once subscriptions start, the Revenue tab becomes the screen you check each morning: MRR, churn, and a 12-month revenue chart per application, computed from live-mode data only — test subscriptions never inflate the numbers.

The Revenue dashboard with MRR, churn, a 12-month revenue chart, and a dunning tile
Northwind App's revenue dashboard: MRR, churn, the 12-month trend, and dunning recovery.

The dunning tile tracks failed-payment recovery, which ReliPay runs automatically: a failed payment opens a recovery case, reminder emails go out on day 0, 3, and 7 through your app's email transport, the subscription auto-cancels (with provider sync) at day 14, and a recovered payment closes the case. You don't have to build any of that — just watch the tile.

10. Manage end-users

The End-users tab lists everyone who has signed up for Northwind App. Search and filters get you to a specific person fast; opening a user shows their subscriptions and payment history in one place — no cross-referencing a payments dashboard.

The End-users tab with a searchable, filterable list of application users
End-users of Northwind App. Open any user to see their subscriptions and payments together.

Three tools on this screen earn their keep:

  • Impersonation — sign in as a user to reproduce exactly what they're reporting, without asking for their password.
  • GDPR export — a one-click DSAR JSON export of everything ReliPay holds on that user.
  • Erasure — handle right-to-be-forgotten requests from the same place.

Gotcha

Impersonation is powerful and therefore logged — every session appears in the audit log (step 14) with the operator who started it. Use it for support, and expect questions if you don't.

11. Wire up webhooks

Outbound webhooks push events from ReliPay to your own backend — a user signed up, a subscription renewed, a payment failed, dunning recovered it. There are 16 typed events across auth, billing, and dunning, so your app can react instead of polling.

The Webhooks tab with endpoint configuration, signing secret, and delivery history
Webhook endpoints for Northwind App, with the signing secret and per-delivery history.
  1. Add your endpoint URL and choose the events to send.
  2. Copy the signing secret and verify the signature on every delivery — @relipay/node ships a verification helper, so it's a couple of lines.
  3. Failed deliveries are retried automatically, and receipts are persisted, so you can inspect and replay any delivery from the panel while debugging your handler.

12. Meter usage

If you sell anything consumption-based, the Usage tab is where it starts. Define a meter — a named metric with units and an aggregation — then report events to it from your backend via the SDK. Usage plans (step 6) bill against those meters, and the tab shows them ticking in real time.

The Usage tab showing meter definitions and a real-time usage dashboard
Meters for Northwind App. Usage-kind plans bill against these; the dashboard updates as events arrive.
  1. Create a meter — e.g. api-calls, unit "request", summed per period.
  2. Report usage events from your server with the SDK.
  3. Create a usage-kind plan pointing at the meter, and billing follows consumption from then on.

13. Invite your team

You shouldn't be the only person in the panel. The Team tab manages workspace members at two levels:

  • Workspace rolesOwner, Admin, and Member control what someone can do across Northwind Labs as a whole.
  • Per-application grants — give a member admin, billing, or viewer access to a specific application. Finance can manage plans and coupons on Northwind App without ever touching API keys or auth config.
The Team tab showing workspace members with roles and per-application access grants
The Northwind Labs team: workspace roles plus per-application grants for least-privilege access.

14. Check the audit log

Everything operators do in the panel — key minted, plan edited, user impersonated, provider credentials changed — lands in the Audit log with who did it and when. When something looks off, this is where the answer is, and a CSV export is one click away for compliance reviews.

The Audit log tab listing operator actions with actor, action, and timestamp, plus CSV export
The audit log: every operator action, attributable and exportable as CSV.

Ready to go live

That's the whole loop. Northwind App now has auth configured, plans priced, a provider connected, and the operational surfaces — revenue, end-users, webhooks, usage, team, audit — set up. Going live from here is mechanical: swap rp_test_ for rp_live_ keys in your production environment, switch the billing tab to your provider's live credentials, and double-check your redirect URLs point at production domains.

Where to go next:

Stuck on a step, or did a screen not match what you see? Tell the team — this guide is updated from real onboarding questions.