Invoices
An invoice is a bill for a list of goods and services provided. If your invoice includes subscription items, it also includes the corresponding service periods and prices.
Invoice components
An invoice is sent from a merchant's organization to a customer. The customer may have a billing address and delivery address. Invoices are sequentially numbered for each customer. If an invoice is associated with a subscription, the subscriptionId
value is displayed. Invoices contain line items. Each line item may have a product ID, plan ID, quantity, service period and pricing information.
An invoice may have associated coupons & discounts, shipping, taxes, transactions, and credit memos.
Invoice lifecycle
This section describes the invoice lifecycle and related terms.
Deleting invoices is not recommended, it may also be illegal in some jurisdictions.
Invoice status
The following are all invoice status types.
Status | Description |
---|---|
abandoned | Invoice is not paid, or not paid in full, and has been abandoned by the merchant. |
paid | Invoice is paid by the customer. |
partially-paid | Invoice amount is partially paid by the customer. |
partially-refunded | Invoice amount is partially refunded to the customer. |
past-due | Invoice is issued to the customer. It is not paid. The payment time-frame has exceeded by more than 24 hours. |
refunded | Invoice amount is fully refunded to the customer. |
unpaid | Invoice is issued to the customer. It is not paid. The payment time-frame has not exceeded. |
voided | Invoice amount is set to zero. Voiding retains the invoice number and lists it in reports but changes the amounts to zero. |
disputed | Invoice amount paid is disputed by the customer or merchant. |
draft | Invoice that is not issued yet. |
Invoice issued and paid on or by due date
This section describes the invoice lifecycle for an invoice that is paid on or by the due date.
- An upcoming invoice is issued and assigned the
unpaid
status. - The invoice is paid in full and assigned the
paid
status.
When an invoice is paid, it may be refunded or disputed. If an invoice is disputed, you may want to suspend the subscription service until the dispute is resolved. For more information, see Pause subscriptions or the Pause a subscription operation.
Invoice issued and partially paid
This section describes the invoice lifecycle for an invoice that is partially paid.
An upcoming invoice is issued and assigned the
unpaid
status.The invoice is partially paid and is assigned the
partially-paid
status. From the partially-paid state:- If the customer pays the remaining amount, the invoice is assigned the
paid
status. This amount can bepartially-refunded
, or fullyrefunded
. - If the customer does not pay the remaining amount, the partially paid amount can be
partially-refunded
, or fullyrefunded
.
- If the customer pays the remaining amount, the invoice is assigned the
Invoice issued and not paid
This section describes the invoice lifecycle for an invoice that is not paid.
- An upcoming invoice is issued and assigned the
unpaid
status. - The invoice is not paid on or before the due date, it retains the
unpaid
status for 24 hours. - The invoice exceeds the 24 hour time-frame. The invoice is assigned the
past-due
status. - The invoice is not paid within the
past-due
time-frame. - The merchant decides to abandon the collection of payment. Or, the autopay retry attempt limit is exceeded. The invoice is assigned the
abandoned
status.
Usage
If you follow the suggested order workflow, you may utilize the invoice using the expand=recentInvoice
query string parameter and value on the order API requests. You may also retrieve any invoice by its ID, for example: GET invoices/123
.
In other resources, the invoice ID may be referred to as the invoiceId
, recentInvoiceId
, initialInvoiceId
or a value with "invoiceId" in the name.
Webhooks
Use webhooks to notify your systems when certain events occur, and to collect information about the events. For more information, see Webhooks.
To record paid invoices in your own system, or push the data to third parties, create a trigger on the Invoice paid event.
Rebilly also provides custom webhooks, that enable you to control the payload using placeholders. These may be useful for integrating directly to third parties without needing to mediate the requests and responses.
Automate emailing invoices
Use Rebilly to email invoices to your customers. For more information, see Automate emailing invoices.
Taxes
Rebilly supports automated tax calculations internationally, using the location of your organization and the location of your customer. You may also manually adjust the taxes on an unpaid invoice. Rebilly calculates taxes after an invoice is issued and recalculates them on every invoice change. The shipping amount is added to tax calculations. For more information, see Taxes.
To calculate taxes:
- The product must be taxable.
- Your organization must have a full address.
- The customer must have a full address.
If you would like to use third-party tax calculators, Contact us.
Coupons and discounts
For information on coupons and discounts, see Coupons and discounts and the Coupons operations.