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 an account’s credit card. This can be done by editing the Billing settings for a particular account.
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.
Note:
- 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 account, manually invoicing an account for a certain product will not prevent an automatic invoice from being created when that product's subscription renews. And something about changing the dates of collection could duplicate or miss charges
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
There are two options for Recurring invoice generation: Bill based on active products and Bill based on recurring invoice. Each of these has different options for the Collect On section, described below.
Bill based on active products
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). You can find the next wholesale renewal date of a product in Partner Center > Administration > My Billing > Active Subscriptions.
A product’s renewal date is the date that you (a partner) will be charged the wholesale cost of the product by Vendasta. It is also the date we use to determine whether that product will be added to any automatically-generated invoices for your customer accounts, according to the billing frequency and retail price that you set for the package or product in your Marketplace Store.
- Select Bill based on active products to include only products whose subscriptions have renewed on the account.
- The amount is determined by the retail price set on each product or package within the store
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 an account 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.
Bill based on recurring invoice
When using the Bill based on recurring invoice setting, the account you’re billing will receive an invoice on the day of the month specified, based on the invoice you design in the Recurring invoice section.
- Select Bill based on recurring invoice to send an invoice based on the Recurring invoice that you specify below.
- By default, prices and contents of packages and products on your recurring invoice will remain the same even when you update them in your marketplace store to ensure that your customers receive the cost you agree upon. If an amendment to the recurring invoice needs to be made, that can be done anytime manually through the Billing Settings page for that .
Collect On
- For Billing based on recurring invoice, you can only select Day of the Month. Choosing the day will create an invoice on the day of the month specified, regardless of what and when active products renew on the account.
- The day of the month that you specify, the invoice will be automatically sent out to the recipient.
Collection method
When an invoice is generated and ready for collection based on the Recurring invoice type and Collect On settings, you can collect in one of three ways:
- 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, and will only be collected by manually 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 account’s saved Payment method automatically on the collection day (which is based on the Collect On section). 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.