When invoicing a customer for products and services with recurring subscriptions (i.e. monthly, yearly), partners may want to automate creating and sending invoices, or automate the charging of a customer’s credit card. This can be done by editing the Billing settings for a particular account.
Customers can be automatically sent an invoice or charged for a product on the day that the product's subscription renews. A product's renewal date is based on when the product was activated, as well as the product's billing frequency (i.e. monthly, yearly). The renewal date of each product active on an account is displayed in the Products section on the account's page under Partner Center > Businesses > Accounts. This is the date that partners will be charged the wholesale cost of the product by Vendasta, as well as the date that the product will be added to any automatically-generated invoice.
An account’s Billing settings are all off by default. To edit these settings for a particular account, go to the Products section on the account's page under Partner Center > Businesses > Accounts and click Billing settings.
Automatically generate and send invoices
Under the Billing automation section, partners can configure how an individual account is invoiced or charged automatically for products and services with recurring subscriptions.
Partners can specify a default Recipient and Payment method for invoices under the Billing defaults section. If no users exist for the account, click + Add a new user to quickly add a user to the account and designate them as an invoice recipient.
To enable Billing automation settings for an account, turn the toggle at the top of the section On. The following settings can then be adjusted for that account.
Recurring
- Select Bill based on active products to include only products whose subscriptions have renewed during the billing period you select under the Collect on settings
- Select Bill based on template invoice to send an invoice based on the Recurring template that you specify below. Note that this setting can only be used when sending a monthly invoice based on the Collect on > Day of month setting.
Collect on
- Select Each renewal, up to once per day to automatically generate an invoice for the recurring price of a product or service on the day that that product or service renews.
- If multiple products renew on the same day, they will be included in the same invoice. Note that customers may receive multiple invoices throughout the month if their products renew on different days.
- Select Day of month will create a draft invoice that renewing products will be added to as the month progresses. On the day of the month that you specify, the invoice will be automatically sent out to the recipient.
Collection method
- Select Manual collection to keep the invoices automatically generated for this account in Draft mode. These draft invoices can be reviewed before being sent or charged for by clicking Send or Charge when viewing the invoice.
- Select Send Email to send automatically generated invoice to the account, which the customer can pay by manually entering their credit card. The invoice will be created with a due date 10 days from the date it is created.
- Select Charge automatically to charge the customer's saved Payment method automatically on the day that automatically generated invoices are created. If a user on the account being invoiced has previously paid an invoice via credit card, their card will be automatically and securely stored by Stripe as a Payment method on that account. After a successful charge, a receipt will be sent to the default Recipient for the account.
- If the recipient has not previously paid through your Store or an invoice, and does not already have a credit card saved, a payable invoice will be sent. After the invoice has been paid, the card will be saved and used for future automatic charges.
- If the charge fails, you will be notified and your customer will receive a "Failed payment" email directing them to the invoice landing page, the customer can pay by manually entering their credit card. If they have new credit card information, this new information will be saved for future purchases.
Recurring template
When using the Bill based on template invoice setting with a particular account, the account will receive an invoice once monthly, based on the template you design in the Recurring template section.
Automatically generated and/or sent invoices can be viewed at any time on Partner Center > Billing > Invoices. These invoices will be tagged as Renewal to differentiate them from manually created invoices.
Note that if Billing automation settings are active for a certain customer, manually invoicing a customer for a certain product will not prevent an automatic invoice from being created when that product's subscription renews. To prevent invoicing your customers twice for the same product renewal, ensure that you have turned their account's Billing automation settings off, and that those settings remain off during the day the product's subscription renews, before manually creating and sending an invoice for the product. i.e. Product A's subscription renews on the 15th, and Product B's subscription renews on the 20th. If you would like to manually invoice your customer for Product A, ensure that their account's Billing automation settings are turned off before the 15th. If you would still like to automatically invoice your customer for Product B, simply turn their Billing automation settings back on after the 15th but before the 20th to ensure that the automatic invoice for Product B is created on the 20th.
Pricing
If a renewing product was purchased as part of a package on or after June 18, 2020, its package pricing will be respected on any automatic invoice as long as all products purchased in the package are still active on the date of renewal.
If a renewing product was purchased as part of a package before June 18, 2020, any automatically-generated invoice will use the product's set retail price. We are currently investigating solutions to apply package pricing to subscriptions created before June 18, 2020.
Notifications
Partners using Vendasta Payments can be notified in-platform when an invoice is automatically generated, as well as when one of their clients pays an invoice. Note that only Partner Center Admin users can receive these notifications.
Invoice and payment notifications can be set up or changed using the Notification Settings page in Partner Center.
To access Notification Settings in Partner Center:
- Click the 🔔 Notifications icon in the topbar
- Click the ⚙️ Settings icon at the top of the 🔔 Notifications drawer
- Scroll down to the Billing section
To be notified when an invoice is automatically generated, turn on platform notifications for Invoice Auto generated.
To be notified when a client pays an invoice or makes a purchase via the Shopping Cart, turn on platform notifications for Retail Payments.