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 Invoicing 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 Invoicing 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 Invoice settings.
Automatically generate and send invoices
- Selecting When Renewed will cause an invoice for the recurring price of a product or service to be created automatically 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. Customers may receive multiple invoices throughout the month if their products renew on different days.
- Selecting Monthly will create a draft invoice that renewing products will be added to as the month progresses. On the day of the month specified, the invoice will be automatically sent out to the recipient.
- Selecting Automatically collect will cause any invoices that have been automatically generated to be sent and/or charged on the day that they are created.
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.
Recipient and collection method
Partners can specify one of two Collection Methods for any of their accounts.
- Send Email: Send an automatically generated invoice to this 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.
- Charge Automatically: 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. If you have chosen to Automatically collect invoices to this account, the Charge Automatically setting will automatically charge their saved credit card and email a receipt for a successful charge.
- 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 new credit card information, this new information will be saved for future purchases.
Partners can specify a default recipient for invoices by selecting a user from the account. If no users exist for the account, click + Add a new user to quickly add a user the account and designate them as an invoice recipient.
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.