Warehouses and Lakes
Finance & Ops Analytics

How to load data from Chargebee to BigQuery

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Chargebee data into BigQuery within minutes.

TL;DR

This can be done by building a data pipeline manually, usually a Python script (you can leverage a tool as Apache Airflow for this). This process can take more than a full week of development. Or it can be done in minutes on Airbyte in three easy steps:

  1. set up Chargebee as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
  2. set up BigQuery as a destination connector
  3. define which data you want to transfer and how frequently

You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

This tutorial’s purpose is to show you how.

What is Chargebee

Chargebee offers subscription and recurring billing system for subscription-based SaaS and eCommerce businesses. It is built with a focus on delivering the best experience to provide a seamless and flexible recurring billing experience to customers and manage customer subscriptions. With the subscription businesses expanding worldwide, eachrecurring revenue business needs more options and flexibility to manage varied billing use-cases.

What is BigQuery

BigQuery is an enterprise data warehouse that draws on the processing power of Google Cloud Storage to enable fast processing of SQL queries through massive datasets. BigQuery helps businesses select the most appropriate software provider to assemble their data, based on the platforms the business uses. Once a business’ data is acculumated, it is moved into BigQuery. The company controls access to the data, but BigQuery stores and processes it for greater speed and convenience.

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Prerequisites

  1. A Chargebee account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
  2. A BigQuery account.
  3. An active Airbyte Cloud account, or you can also choose to use Airbyte Open Source locally. You can follow the instructions to set up Airbyte on your system using docker-compose.

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform that consolidates and streamlines the process of extracting and loading data from multiple data sources to data warehouses. It offers pre-built connectors, including Chargebee and BigQuery, for seamless data migration.

When using Airbyte to move data from Chargebee to BigQuery, it extracts data from Chargebee using the source connector, converts it into a format BigQuery can ingest using the provided schema, and then loads it into BigQuery via the destination connector. This allows businesses to leverage their Chargebee data for advanced analytics and insights within BigQuery, simplifying the ETL process and saving significant time and resources.

Step 1: Set up Chargebee as a source connector

1. First, navigate to the "Sources" tab on the Airbyte dashboard.
2. Click on the "Create a new source" button and select "Chargebee" from the list of available connectors.
3. Enter a name for your Chargebee source connector and click "Next".
4. Enter your Chargebee API key and site name in the appropriate fields. You can find your API key in your Chargebee account under "Settings" > "Configure Chargebee" > "API Keys". Your site name is the subdomain of your Chargebee account URL (e.g. if your account URL is "https://example.chargebee.com", your site name would be "example").
5. Click "Test" to ensure that your credentials are correct and Airbyte can connect to your Chargebee account.
6. Once the test is successful, click "Create" to save your Chargebee source connector.
7. You can now configure your sync settings for your Chargebee source connector, such as selecting which tables to sync and setting up any necessary transformations.
8. Click "Save" to finalize your sync settings and start syncing data from your Chargebee account to your destination.

Step 2: Set up BigQuery as a destination connector

1. First, navigate to the Airbyte dashboard and select the "Destinations" tab on the left-hand side of the screen.

2. Scroll down until you find the "BigQuery" destination connector and click on it.

3. Click the "Create Destination" button to begin setting up your BigQuery destination.

4. Enter your Google Cloud Platform project ID and service account credentials in the appropriate fields.

5. Next, select the dataset you want to use for your destination and enter the table prefix you want to use.

6. Choose the schema mapping for your data, which will determine how your data is organized in BigQuery.

7. Finally, review your settings and click the "Create Destination" button to complete the setup process.

8. Once your destination is created, you can begin configuring your source connectors to start syncing data to BigQuery.

9. To do this, navigate to the "Sources" tab on the left-hand side of the screen and select the source connector you want to use.

10. Follow the prompts to enter your source credentials and configure your sync settings.

11. When you reach the "Destination" step, select your BigQuery destination from the dropdown menu and choose the dataset and table prefix you want to use.

12. Review your settings and click the "Create Connection" button to start syncing data from your source to your BigQuery destination.

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Chargebee data to BigQuery

Once you've successfully connected Chargebee as a data source and BigQuery as a destination in Airbyte, you can set up a data pipeline between them with the following steps:

  1. Create a new connection: On the Airbyte dashboard, navigate to the 'Connections' tab and click the '+ New Connection' button.
  2. Choose your source: Select Chargebee from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
  3. Select your destination: Choose BigQuery from the dropdown list of your configured destinations.
  4. Configure your sync: Define the frequency of your data syncs based on your business needs. Airbyte allows both manual and automatic scheduling for your data refreshes.
  5. Select the data to sync: Choose the specific Chargebee objects you want to import data from towards BigQuery. You can sync all data or select specific tables and fields.
  6. Select the sync mode for your streams: Choose between full refreshes or incremental syncs (with deduplication if you want), and this for all streams or at the stream level. Incremental is only available for streams that have a primary cursor.
  7. Test your connection: Click the 'Test Connection' button to make sure that your setup works. If the connection test is successful, save your configuration.
  8. Start the sync: If the test passes, click 'Set Up Connection'. Airbyte will start moving data from Chargebee to BigQuery according to your settings.

Remember, Airbyte keeps your data in sync at the frequency you determine, ensuring your BigQuery data warehouse is always up-to-date with your Chargebee data.

Use Cases to transfer your Chargebee data to BigQuery

Integrating data from Chargebee to BigQuery provides several benefits. Here are a few use cases:

  1. Advanced Analytics: BigQuery’s powerful data processing capabilities enable you to perform complex queries and data analysis on your Chargebee data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Chargebee alone.
  2. Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Chargebee, syncing to BigQuery allows you to centralize your data for a holistic view of your operations, and to set up a change data capture process so you never have any discrepancies in your data again.
  3. Historical Data Analysis: Chargebee has limits on historical data. Syncing data to BigQuery allows for long-term data retention and analysis of historical trends over time.
  4. Data Security and Compliance: BigQuery provides robust data security features. Syncing Chargebee data to BigQuery ensures your data is secured and allows for advanced data governance and compliance management.
  5. Scalability: BigQuery can handle large volumes of data without affecting performance, providing an ideal solution for growing businesses with expanding Chargebee data.
  6. Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Chargebee data in BigQuery, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
  7. Reporting and Visualization: While Chargebee provides reporting tools, data visualization tools like Tableau, PowerBI, Looker (Google Data Studio) can connect to BigQuery, providing more advanced business intelligence options. If you have a Chargebee table that needs to be converted to a BigQuery table, Airbyte can do that automatically.

Wrapping Up

To summarize, this tutorial has shown you how to:

  1. Configure a Chargebee account as an Airbyte data source connector.
  2. Configure BigQuery as a data destination connector.
  3. Create an Airbyte data pipeline that will automatically be moving data directly from Chargebee to BigQuery after you set a schedule

With Airbyte, creating data pipelines take minutes, and the data integration possibilities are endless. Airbyte supports the largest catalog of API tools, databases, and files, among other sources. Airbyte's connectors are open-source, so you can add any custom objects to the connector, or even build a new connector from scratch without any local dev environment or any data engineer within 10 minutes with the no-code connector builder.

We look forward to seeing you make use of it! We invite you to join the conversation on our community Slack Channel, or sign up for our newsletter. You should also check out other Airbyte tutorials, and Airbyte’s content hub!

What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

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Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team. 
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Connectors Used

In today's dynamic business environment, the need for subscription-based services has surged due to evolving consumer preferences and demands. Subscription models are transformative, offering a recurring revenue stream and fostering long-term customer relationships. Chargebee is a subscription management solution that is vital in this landscape. Connecting Chargebee with BigQuery helps businesses merge Chargebee's subscription data with BigQuery's analysis tools, providing valuable insights for improved customer experiences and better decision-making.

In this article, you'll explore the two popular methods to integrate Chargebee and BigQuery after a quick overview of both platforms.

Chargebee Overview

Image Source: Chargebee

Chargebee is a subscription management and recurring billing tool serving 227 countries with over 6,500 customers. It helps you handle all the subscription aspects, such as billing, invoicing, and revenue recognition. While Chargebee is not a payment gateway, it seamlessly integrates with other services to handle both recurring and one-time payments. The platform supports a diverse range of payment options such as Paypal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Amazon Payments, debit and credit cards, bank-based payments, and more. 

BigQuery Overview 

Image Source: Google

Google BigQuery is a leading cloud-based data warehousing platform. It is a fully managed storage system that allows you to store and analyze your data with built-in features like geospatial analysis, business intelligence, and machine learning. BigQuery stores data in columnar format, which helps increase efficiency in executing queries by reducing the amount of data that needs to be processed. 

You can use BigQuery either through its web-based user interface (UI) or through the command-line tool. The web interface of Google Cloud enables you to streamline complex queries and perform complex tasks of storing and analyzing data in a few clicks. However, the command-line tool helps developers and data scientists use third-party libraries, tools, and APIs to transform and analyze data logically. 

Methods to Move Data From Chargebee to BigQuery

  • Method 1: Using Airbyte to connect Chargebee to BigQuery
  • Method 2: Using the manual method to migrate data from Chargebee to BigQuery

Method 1: Using Airbyte to Connect Chargebee to BigQuery

Airbyte is an ETL tool that automates data integration from sources to destinations. Using its pre-built connectors, transformation features, and intuitive interface, you can get a unified platform for your specific data pipeline needs. In addition, the process of connecting Chargebee to BigQuery is very straightforward. Here's how to perform this task: 

Step 1: Establish Chargebee as Source

  • Create an account on Airbyte cloud or log in to an existing one. 
  • On the Airbyte cloud dashboard, click the Sources tab from the left navigation bar. 
  • Type in Chargebee on the Search field and click on the connector box. 
  • Next, you’ll see a Create a source page.  
  • Fill in the required fields, including API Key, Site, Start Date, Product Catalog, and configure your Chargebee details.
  • Click on Set up Source
  • To learn more about using Chargebee as a data source in Airbyte. Click here

Step 2: Establish BigQuery As Destination

  • After successfully configuring Chargebee as a source, click on the Destinations tab in the left pane. 
  • Now, select the Search field on the Destinations page and type in BigQuery.  
  • Click on the connector card as you see one. 
  • You'll be directed to Create a destination page. 
  • Provide a unique Destination name for the connector. On the Connection section, fill in Google Cloud details, including Project ID, Dataset location, and Default Dataset ID. 
  • On the bottom, you'll see the Loading Method. Select between: GCS Staging and Standard Inserts.
  • Add Service Account Key JSON and other fields according to your requirements. 
  • Click Set up destination

Step 3: Create a Connection Between Chargebee And BigQuery

  • Now that you have set up a source and destination, you must establish a connection between Chargebee and BigQuery in Airbyte. To perform this task, click Create a connection after creating a destination or click on the Connections tab from the left navigation bar. 
  • Select Chargebee from Step 1 and BigQuery from Step 2 to create a connection. 
  • Next, provide a unique Connection name.
  • Select the Schedule type as Scheduled, Manual, or Cron. Configure other necessary settings, such as Destination Namespace, Destination Stream Prefix, and Detect and propagate schema changes
  • You can also adjust the Sync mode and select Replication frequency according to your requirements. 
  • Lastly, click on Set up Connection > Sync mode to start synchronization.

Done. This will successfully migrate your data from Chargebee to BigQuery.  

Method 2: Using CSV Files to Migrate Data from Chargebee to BigQuery Manually

There are several ways to move data from Chargebee to BigQuery manually. However, in this method, we will use the import/export of CSV files to connect data between both systems. 

Here's a detailed guide: 

Prerequisites

Step 1: Export Data From Chargebee in CSV Format

  • Login to your Chargebee account to access its web interface. 
  • Look at the right-hand navigation bar on the home page and click on Settings options. 
  • Click on the Import & Export Data option from the dropdown menu. 
  • You’ll see an Export Chargebee data section. There, click on the Export data button. 
  • Now, you can export the data you want, including invoice data, transactions, product catalog, and subscription data. 
  • After selecting the export data, click the Select Criteria to export button. 
  • Next, it'll give you a popup menu that previews data where you can add certain filters and conditions according to your business requirements. You can also choose to export data in default configurations.
  • Lastly, click on the Export option, and it will start preparing your data and download it on a zip file on your local machine.
  • Go to the zip file you downloaded on your local machine and extract it to obtain a CSV file with the data on it. 
  • Verify the data in the CSV file and structure it as per your ideal format if necessary. 

Step 2: Upload the Data in Google Drive

  • Now, we will use Google Drive as a mediator to upload the CSV file to BigQuery easily. 
  • To perform this task, log in to your Google Drive account. 
  • From the top left corner, click on the +New button. Then, from the dropdown menu, select File Upload. 
  • Choose the CSV file you downloaded from Step 1 and upload it. 
  • After the upload is successful, copy the link to the file destination in Google Drive.

Step 3: Import Data into Google BigQuery

  • Login to your Google Cloud console and navigate to the BigQuery page. 
  • In the Explorer pane from the left side, create a new project or select an existing one in BigQuery. 
  • Click on the Create dataset option to create a new database under your current project. 
  • Now provide a unique Dataset name, and fill in other configuration details per your requirements. Click CREATE DATASET
  • Right-click on the Dataset you just created and click +Create table
  • In the Create table section, give your table a unique name. 
  • Select Drive as the source. In the Select Drive URI field, paste the link to the file you uploaded to Google Drive from Step 2, and set the file format to CSV
  • Configure other details and click CREATE TABLE
  • Ensure the destination is the project and database you created in BigQuery. 
  • Now, BigQuery will automatically import the data file you exported from Step 1.
  • Verify the table's structure and tweak the formatting according to your requirements.

That's it. You have successfully migrated your Chargebee data to BigQuery. 

Limitations of Using Manual Method

  • Error-prone: The process becomes more error-prone as the manual method requires human intervention. There can be formatting errors, file handling mistakes, structural mismatches, and a lack of error tracking. This can result in data loss and incorrect data migration. 
  • Limited Scalability: The manual approach is not scalable when dealing with huge amounts of data or performing frequent data transfers. As data grows, it becomes more and more unfeasible, which results in more complex integrations and longer migration times. 

Conclusion

You have learned two easy ways to migrate data from Chargebee to BigQuery. The first method uses an approach that automates data integration using the Airbyte ETL tool. You just have to select Chargebee as the source and BigQuery as a destination and connect the source to the destination. Within a few clicks, you are done with the migration. 

However, the manual approach is time and human-resource-intensive. You have to export the data in a CSV file from Chargebee, transform it accordingly, upload it to Google Drive, and then import it to BigQuery. Additionally, you must perform this task whenever you require new data on Chargebee to leverage BigQuery's features. 

We suggest using Airbyte to streamline data migration from any source to the destination of your choice.

What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

flag icon
Easily address your data movement needs with Airbyte Cloud
Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team. 
Get started with Airbyte for free
high five icon
Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
Talk to sales
stars sparkling
Improve your data infrastructure knowledge
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and get the community’s new enlightening content along with Airbyte’s progress in their mission to solve data integration once and for all.
Subscribe to newsletter

Connectors Used

Frequently Asked Questions

What data can you extract from Chargebee?

Chargebee's API provides access to a wide range of data related to subscription management and billing. The following are the categories of data that can be accessed through Chargebee's API:  

1. Customers: Information related to customers such as name, email, address, and payment details.  
2. Subscriptions: Details about the subscription plans, including the plan name, billing frequency, and pricing.  
3. Invoices: Information about the invoices generated for the subscriptions, including the invoice amount, due date, and payment status.  
4. Payments: Details about the payments made by customers, including the payment method, transaction ID, and amount.  
5. Products: Information about the products or services offered by the business, including the product name, description, and pricing.  
6. Coupons: Details about the discounts or promotional offers provided to customers, including the coupon code, discount amount, and validity period.  
7. Events: Real-time updates about the events related to subscriptions, such as subscription creation, cancellation, and renewal.  

Overall, Chargebee's API provides comprehensive access to the data required for managing subscriptions and billing, enabling businesses to streamline their operations and improve customer experience.

What data can you transfer to BigQuery?

You can transfer a wide variety of data to BigQuery. This usually includes structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data like transaction records, log files, JSON data, CSV files, and more, allowing robust, scalable data integration and analysis.

What are top ETL tools to transfer data from Chargebee to BigQuery?

The most prominent ETL tools to transfer data from Chargebee to BigQuery include:

  • Airbyte
  • Fivetran
  • Stitch
  • Matillion
  • Talend Data Integration

These tools help in extracting data from Chargebee and various sources (APIs, databases, and more), transforming it efficiently, and loading it into BigQuery and other databases, data warehouses and data lakes, enhancing data management capabilities.