Managing Customers

In Chargebee, customers hold all the details of a subscriber. The customer record is the main object used to store and manage the subscriber's billing and contact information, card details, and payment method.

Creating a New Customer

You can create customers in three ways:

• When a new subscription is created
• Through the web interface
• Using the API

When a New Subscription is Created

When a new subscription is created through the hosted page, Chargebee user interface, or the API, Chargebee automatically creates a new customer record.

Through Chargebee Site

You can create a new customer under Customers > Create Customer.

Using API

You can use the Create a Customer API to create a new customer.

Once a customer is created, it contains basic attributes including customer id, name, email, company name and phone number. These attributes are common to the customer object.

The additional entities linked to the customer object are:

• Subscriptions
• Custom Fields
• Billing Address

Except for subscriptions, all other entities are common to the customer object.

Accessing Customer Information in Chargebee

You can access customer details from the Customers tab.

Clicking the Name of a customer opens the Customer Details page, which contains all information related to the customer, such as subscriptions, billing info, payment methods, and more.

You can also perform other operations from the index page:

• Send Email: Send emails to all customers at once by clicking the more icon next to the search bar, then Email Customers. Use common templates and mail merge tags below the email body to personalize emails.
• Export: Export all customers in your site as a ZIP file by clicking the more icon next to the search bar, then Export Customers CSV.
• Bulk Action: Perform bulk actions such as Delete or Change Auto Collection settings for one or more customer records. Select records and click the respective buttons. Bulk actions can only be performed by admins.
• Search: Search for a customer using the search bar on the left.
• Customize Columns: Show only the details you want to see by customizing columns.
• Sort: Sort customers based on your selected criteria.

Exempting a Customer from Tax Payment

You can exempt a customer from paying taxes by selecting the This customer is tax exempt checkbox.

Setting Up Price Type

Chargebee's pricing flexibility is designed to meet the diverse needs of merchants. Previously, price type configuration was set at the site level for each currency. Now, Chargebee offers enhanced flexibility for subscriptions, allowing you to optimize pricing for B2B and B2C customers with different tax preferences or pricing models.

Setting Up Price Type Configurations via the Chargebee App To set up price type configuration, use the Price Type field within the customer details page. This field lets you specify the price type for individual customers based on their preferences. Enter values exactly as follows:

• Tax Inclusive – Select if you want pricing for a customer to include taxes. This setting overrides currency-level and region-based pricing configurations. Merchants typically use Tax Inclusive pricing for B2C customers or to maintain consistent pricing for existing customers. When applied, tax calculations ensure the total price remains unchanged.
• Tax Exclusive – Choose if you want taxes added on top of the base price for a customer. This setting also overrides the default tax configuration at the currency and region level. Merchants often use Tax Exclusive pricing for B2B customers or new customers to ensure tax amounts are calculated separately from the base price.
• Site Default – Use to apply the tax settings defined at the site level for tax calculations. If selected, pricing type follows the existing configuration set at the site level, without overriding currency or region-based rules.
  

Setting Up Price Type Configurations via the Chargebee API To set up price type configurations via the Chargebee API, you can leverage the Create a Customer API or Update a Customer API. Specifically, you can utilize the following fields:

• tax_providers_fields[provider_name][0] Value = all

• tax_providers_fields[field_id][0] Value = priceType

• tax_providers_fields[field_value][0] Value = tax_inclusive or tax_exclusive or site_default or blank (case insensitive)

Paying via bank account

When you need a customer to pay directly from their bank account, select Allow customer to pay via their bank account. This is possible for new and existing customers.

The checkbox would show up only if you have configured direct debit or credit transfer as one of your payment methods.

For new customers:

In your Chargebee user interface, click Customers > Create Customer. The checkbox shows up in the create customer page as shown below:

For existing customers:

In your Chargebee user interface, go to the customer for whom you need bank payment enabled and click Edit Customer found on the Action pane. Then, select the option as shown below:

Subscriptions

You can either create a subscription for an existing customer or a new customer. When a new subscription is created, a customer object is automatically created as well.

Creating subscriptions for an existing customer can be done through the web interface or using the API.

To create a new subscription for a customer through Chargebee user interface, navigate to the customer's profile and click Create New Subscription option as shown here:

Click here to read more about subscriptions.

Custom Fields

Apart from the default fields provided for the customer object, you can create custom fields to track additional customer information.

Customer Payment Method Details

Chargebee supports a host of different payment methods and multiple payment methods per customer. Once a customer's payment method details are added, the payment method is tried every time a charge needs to be collected.

If you are adding multiple payment methods against a customer, Chargebee also allows you to mark one as primary and another as backup to ensure you don't lose revenue in case a payment method fails.

Payment method details can be added, updated or removed for a customer using the web interface, Chargebee's API, and Chargebee's hosted pages. Check out for more information.

Excess Payments

If you have collected payment from a customer in advance, or if the customer has made a single payment for multiple invoices, use the Record an offline payment option to account for the same:

The recorded payment will be automatically applied to the future invoices. It can also be manually applied to the existing Not Paid or Payment Due invoices.

Auto Collection Status

The Auto collection status of a customer decides whether or not subscriptions linked to the customer should be charged automatically using the card on file. If Auto collection is Off, the subscriptions will not be charged automatically even if the card is present. When Auto collection is On, an attempt to charge the card will be made.

Customer Billing Address

A customer's billing address can be captured during sign up for customers with and without a card. If you've enabled , then the billing address information needs to be provided by the customer during sign up.

For merchants in the EU region who've enabled EU VAT, the taxes will be applied based on the billing country specified during sign up. So when creating subscriptions, you need to explicitly provide the billing country for the system to decide whether tax needs to be applied or not.

For subscriptions created without passing the billing country, EU VAT will not be applied.

Billing address for customers with card

The customer's billing information is linked to the customer's credit card for online subscriptions.

When a subscription is created with a card on file, the billing address captured along with the card details will be used as the customer's billing address as well. But you can edit the customer's billing info if needed, using the Update Billing Info option available in the Actions panel.

In a nutshell, for customers with a card, there is no need to worry about updating the customer's billing address separately.

Billing address for offline customers

Offline customers are subscribers who do not have a card on file and have an offline subscription.

For offline subscriptions, the billing information can also be collected during sign up. If you've selected the fields for validation, these fields will be automatically displayed when creating the offline subscription through the Chargebee user interface.

When creating offline subscriptions using the API, you can include the additional attributes for billing_address using the customer object.

For offline subscriptions, you can update the billing information within the subscription through the web interface or through the update billing info for customerAPI.

Add Contact

If your customer wants their team or an alternative point of contact to receive emails related to billing such as invoices, payment success notifications, etc., you can configure Chargebee to send them emails using the Add additional contacts option. For example, if your customer would like their accounts team to receive a copy of the invoice, you could add the accountant's email or the team's email as an additional contact and link it to the respective customer. You can add up to a maximum of ten contacts.

To link an additional contact, go to customer's details page and click Add additional contacts:

The form for adding contacts appears, as shown below:

Fill in the Id - this will be the reference ID used by Chargebee API to identify the contact.

Fill in the name, email address, and phone number. Use the Tag field to add a tag for your reference.

Emails

The emails that can be sent to this additional contact are categorized into two groups:

Billing Emails

Enable this option if you want your team to receive the following emails:

• Invoice Receipt
• Payment Succeeded
• Payment Failed
• Payment Refunded
• Payment Initiated
• Refund Initiated
• Card Expiring
• Card Expired

Account Emails

Enable this option if you want your team to receive the following emails:

• Subscription Created
• Subscription Started
• Subscription Trial Ending
• Subscription Renewal
• Subscription Activation
• Subscription Changed
• Subscription Cancellation
• Shipping Address Updated

Click Add to save.

The contacts added using this option will appear under a new section, Additional Contacts, as shown below:

This section also provides the options to add, edit, remove contacts, or disable email notifications for them.

Deleting a Customer

If you wish to delete a customer record in Chargebee, open the specific customer's details page and click the Delete Customer option available on the Actions panel.

This operation is irreversible - all data related to the customer, such as Subscriptions and Invoices, will be deleted.

The numbers in the following reports will get modified when a Customer is deleted:

• Payments
• New Revenue
• Signups
• Activations
• Cancellations
• Refunds

You can also delete a Customer using the Delete a Customer API.

Note: The Delete Customer action or API call is unavailable for the customer records linked to gift subscriptions (i.e. those of gifters and the recipients).

Clear Personal Data

For eligible customer records, a special action called Clear Personal Data is available on the action pane (provided Personal Data Management is configured). Based on certain site configurations, this action clears the personally identifiable information in the customer record to help protect customer data privacy.

Clear Personal Data is different from Delete Customer. The fine points of difference are noted in a question in this FAQ.