Many of your customers may subscribe to one or more products/services that you offer. Chargebee generates a separate invoice for each subscription renewal, by default. So when multiple subscriptions renew on the same day, the customer could end up receiving too many invoices on a single day from you. Consolidated invoicing in Chargebee helps combine all the charges raised on any given day into a single invoice.
Consolidating invoices across multiple customer records is only possible when account hierarchy is enabled.
Consolidated Invoicing is disabled in Chargebee by default. To enable consolidated invoicing in your Chargebee site, follow these steps:
Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Consolidated Invoicing > Enable.
In the Consolidated Invoicing page, perform the following steps:
Click Apply.
Here's a sample of an invoice that consolidates charges for a customer:
After consolidated invoicing is enabled, the subscription renewals and unbilled charges for a customer are consolidated into single invoice only when they meet ALL of the following conditions:
Let's look at examples of subscriptions for the same customer and see how their invoices are consolidated.
Example 1
| On | On | On | |
Based on the prerequisites mentioned before, the charges for subscriptions A and C with the same payment method are consolidated. A separate invoice is raised for subscription B.
Example 2
| Today | ||||
| Off | Off | Off | Off |
Here we see that subscriptions A and B are billed in AUD while C and D are billed in USD. This results in two invoices, one for each pair of subscriptions.
After configuring consolidated invoicing in your Chargebee site, consolidated invoicing is enabled for all your customer records. When the Allow overriding via Chargebee interface option is enabled, users can disable consolidated invoicing for specific customers from the application User Interface.
To customize the consolidated invoicing settings for specific customers, go to the details page of the customer record, click the Override option for Consolidated Invoicing. You can enable/disable consolidated invoicing for the customer using the toggle button.
Via API
You can also enable/disable consolidated invoicing for a Customer via API:
When you invoice unbilled charges for a customer on-demand, then, subject to the consolidation rules, the charges across different subscriptions are consolidated into one or more invoices.
When multiple subscriptions renew on the same day and at different times, the invoice consolidation happens when it's time for the last renewal of the day. Until then, the other renewals for the day are added to unbilled charges.
If Chargebee is running on day-based billing mode then all renewals would be scheduled for the beginning of the renewal date.
If the dunning settings are set to cancel subscriptions on dunning failure, all the subscriptions on a consolidated invoice are cancelled on dunning failure.
In a consolidated invoice, from among the next billing dates of all the recurring charges on it, the most immediately upcoming date is shown as the next billing date of the invoice.
If a coupon applies to all the charges on the invoice, it is appended at the bottom of the invoice. If it does not apply to all the charges, then it is applied and shown at the line-item level.
If you have enabled metered billing in your Chargebee site, you can consolidate invoices for multiple subscriptions, as long as they meet all prerequisites for consolidation. The charges for multiple subscriptions can be consolidated into a single invoice in pending status. Usage charges can be added to the associated pending invoice before closing it.
For multiple subscriptions that are on metered billing, the consolidated pending invoice is generated based on the subscription that renews at last in a chronological order. Let's consider the following three subscriptions with metered billing, renewing on the same day for consolidated invoicing:
In this case, a consolidated pending invoice is generated at 3 PM (during the renewal of last subscription). You can add usage charges to this invoice using the Quick Create Charge option. After adding all charges and reviewing the invoice, you can close the pending invoice and have it sent to the customer as a single consolidated invoice.
Tax for all the charges in the invoice are calculated on the date on invoice, irrespective of when the charge is created. For example, if a one-off charge is created in the middle of the term and added to unbilled items, Chargebee calculates the tax for the one-off charge as it applies on the date the invoice is created.
Any custom fields that apply to a particular subscription appears at the line item level in a consolidated invoice (that contains multiple subscriptions/charges).
PO number and custom fields from the subscription will be filled in the line items only during invoice creation.
To disable the feature in your Chargebee site, follow these steps:
This disables invoice consolidation for your site completely. On re-enabling the feature, the Customer-level settings are restored.
1. How does consolidated invoicing affect my new sales report?
The new sales report shows the total value of new recurring invoices generated for a particular period. For any given period, this report sums up the values of all first recurring invoices generated during that period.
When invoices are consolidated, only those line-items of a consolidated invoice that are first recurring charges for a subscription are included in the New Sales report.
2. How does the change in time zone affect consolidated invoicing?
Consolidated invoicing will have multiple line items renewing at different instances in a day. Changing time zone also means that these line items should renew on the same day, despite the change in timezone. Chargebee takes care of the change in the backend.
Say a customer receives consolidated invoice for three subscriptions that renew at three different times of the day.
| Line Item # | Subscription Name | Renewal Date | Renewal Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Subscription #1 | 1 Jan 2017 | 10.00 AM |
| 2. | Subscription #2 | 1 Jan 2017 | 3.00 PM |
| 3. | Subscription #3 | 1 Jan 2017 | 9.30 PM |
If the merchant changes the timezone from UTC to IST. It means the renewal time and therefore the renewal date will change for some line items in the invoice.
| Line Item # | Subscription Name | Renewal Date | Renewal Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Subscription #1 | 1 Jan 2017 | 3.30 PM |
| 2. | Subscription #2 | 1 Jan 2017 | 8.30 PM |
| 3. | Subscription #3 | 2 Jan 2017 | 3.00 AM |
This shift will reflect in the current month's invoice. But the invoice amount will be the same. From the upcoming renewal on, the renewal day and time will fall back to the original.
| Line Item # | Subscription Name | Renewal Date | Renewal Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Subscription #1 | 1 Feb 2017 | 10.00 AM |
| 2. | Subscription #2 | 1 Feb 2017 | 3.00 PM |
| 3. | Subscription #3 | 1 Feb 2017 | 9.30 PM |