This article covers
How to generate invoices before the renewal date?
Can I automate my “Bill Future Renewals”?
Summary
Advancing an invoice lets you improve cashflow and bill your customers as and when they pay you avoiding the hassle of waiting for an invoice generation until the day the subscription is turned on. For example, if a customer makes payment on 15th April 2020 for a subscription that starts on 1st May 2020 you can invoice them in advance on 15th April 2020, once you realize the payment.
To invoice a subscription’s upcoming renewal beforehand, you can use the "Bill future renewals" option from Subscriptions.
Note: This feature is available only from the Scale plan and above however it is available in your test site by default. If you would like to enable this for your account contact support.
Steps to configure an advance invoice via the web interface:
Create a subscription with a future activation date say, 16th Nov 2020
Go to the Subscriptions details page
Under the Action panel click Bill Future Renewals
Enter the number of subscription renewals that you would like to bill immediately (Max allowed number of renewals is 24)
Click Preview Changes and review the invoice amount
Click Generate to apply changes to the invoice.
Note: The above workflow is possible only when the customer has "Auto Collection" turned “ON” and has a valid form of payment credentials linked to the subscription.
Bill Future Renewals also works when “Auto collection” is turned “OFF” when the customer makes an offline payment via cash, cheque or bank transfer provided, the offline payments are recorded after invoice generation manually.
Use the “Charge Future Renewals” API to automate the advance billing.
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