Consolidated Invoicing 

Overview 

Customers may subscribe to one or more products/services that you offer and a separate invoice for each subscription renewal is generated, by default. When multiple subscriptions renew on the same day, the customer could receive too many invoices on a single day from you.

Consolidated invoicing in Chargebee helps combine all charges raised on any given day into a single invoice.

Limitations 

There are some limitations while using the consolidated invoicing feature in Chargebee. These limitations are:

• Even if the invoices are consolidated to one, customers will receive multiple renewal reminder email notifications.
• Consolidating invoices across multiple customer records is only possible when account hierarchy is enabled.
• If you wish to have all subscriptions renew on the same day of the month or week, then enable Calendar Billing.
• Currently, Chargebee does not support subscription-related merge tags for consolidated invoices for the email notifications listed:
  • Invoice Receipt
  • NetD Payment Due Reminder
  • Offline Payment Reminder (Offline Dunning Invoice)
  • Payment Succeeded
  • Payment Failed
  • Payment Initiated
  • Payment Refunded
  • Refund Initiated

Prerequisites for Invoice Consolidation 

The subscription renewals and unbilled charges for a customer can be consolidated into single invoice only when they meet ALL of the following conditions:

• The setting for consolidated invoicing must be enabled.
• The charges for the customer (subscription renewals and unbilled charges) are due to be invoiced on the same day.
• The charges have the same currency.
• The charges are from subscriptions that have the same auto-collection status.
• If auto-collection is enabled, then the subscriptions have exactly the same payment method.

Configuring Consolidated Invoicing 

Consolidated Invoicing is disabled in Chargebee by default. To enable consolidated invoicing in your Chargebee site, follow these steps:

1. Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Consolidated Invoicing > Enable.
2. In the Consolidated Invoicing page, perform the following steps:

   • Consolidate invoices for all customers: You can enable invoice consolidation for all customers by selecting this option. You can optionally allow overriding for individual customer records via Chargebee interface, by toggling this option as displayed below.

     

   • Generate separate invoices for charges with different shipping addresses: If this option is enabled, when the charges have different shipping addresses, they are not invoiced together and if they have the same shipping address, they are consolidated. You can disable this option to ignore shipping addresses for the purpose of invoice consolidation.

   • Generate separate invoices for charges with different Purchase Order (PO) numbers: If enabled, when the charges have different PO numbers, they are not invoiced together; however, they are consolidated if they have the same PO number. You can disable this option to ignore the PO number for invoice consolidation.

3. Click Apply.

Here's a sample of an invoice that consolidates charges for a customer:

To disable the feature in your Chargebee site, follow this step:

1. Click Settings > Configure Chargebee > Consolidated Invoicing.
2. Click Disable.

This disables invoice consolidation for your site completely. On re-enabling the feature, the Customer-level settings are restored.

Let's look at examples of how the invoices of multiple subscriptions for a customer get consolidated.

Example 1

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

Here we can observe 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.

Consolidation Settings for Specific Customers 

You can enable or disable consolidated invoicing for specific customers using both the user interface and the API.

Using Chargebee's User Interface

To customize the consolidated invoicing settings for specific customers, follow these steps:

1. Click Customers and go to the details page of the customer record.
2. Click Edit Customer > Consolidated Invoicing drop-down, and select one of the following:
   • Use Site Default: Assume the same setting as the one set for the site.
   • Always Consolidate: Enable consolidated invoicing for the customer regardless of the site setting.
   • Never Consolidate: Disable consolidated invoicing for the customer regardless of the site setting.

On selecting any of the last two options, the details page for the customer shows the current setting.

Using API

You can also enable/disable consolidated invoicing for a customer via API:

• Create a Customer 
• Update a Customer 

Impacts of Consolidating Invoices 

Unbilled Charges 

When you invoice unbilled charges for a customer on-demand, subject to the consolidation rules, the charges across different subscriptions are consolidated into one or more invoices.

Subscription Renewals 

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.

Dunning 

If the dunning settings are set to cancel subscriptions on dunning failure, all the subscriptions on a consolidated invoice are cancelled on dunning failure.

Next Billing Date 

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.

Coupons 

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.

Consolidated Invoicing and Metered Billing 

If you have enabled metered billing in your Chargebee site, you can consolidate invoices for subscriptions with metered and non-metered components, as long as they meet all prerequisites for consolidation. The charges for multiple subscriptions are consolidated into a single invoice with pending status. Usage can be added to the associated subscriptions before closing the invoice.

For multiple subscriptions with metered and non-metered components, a 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 and non-metered components renewing on the same day for consolidated invoicing:

• Subscription A: renews at 11 am.
• Subscription B: renews at 2 pm.
• Subscription C: renews at 3 pm.

Subscriptions with automatic closure of invoices: When the invoices for all these subscriptions are set for an automatic closure with a wait period of two hours, a consolidated pending invoice is generated at 3 PM (during the renewal of last subscription). Usage can be added for the pending invoice against all subscriptions until the last automatic closure time occurs after the wait period, this is 3 pm+ 2 hours = 5pm.

Subscriptions with manual closure of invoices: When the invoices for all these subscriptions are set for a manual closure, a consolidated pending invoice is generated at 3 PM. Usage can be added to the pending invoice against all subscriptions until the time you manually close the pending invoice.

You can manually close the pending invoice anytime, with or without adding usage and the consolidated invoice gets closed and sent to the customer.

Subscriptions with automatic and manual closure of invoices: Let's consider the following three subscriptions with metered and non-metered components renewing on the same day for consolidated invoicing:

• Subscription A: renews at 11 am (automatic closure of invoices with a wait period of 2 hours)
• Subscription B: renews at 5 pm (automatic closure of invoices with a wait period of 2 hours)
• Subscription C: renews at 8 pm (manual closure of invoices)

A consolidated pending invoice is generated at 8 PM. Usage can be added to the pending invoice against all subscriptions until the time you manually close the pending invoice.

You can manually review and close the pending invoice anytime, with or without adding usage and the consolidated invoice gets closed and sent to the customer.

Taxes applicable to the subscriptions/charges on the invoice 

Taxes for all the charges in the invoice are calculated according to the date on the 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.

Custom Fields on the invoices 

Any custom fields that apply to a particular subscription appear at the line item level in a consolidated invoice (that contains multiple subscriptions/charges). However, the PO number and custom fields from the subscription are filled in only during invoice creation.

FAQs 

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 displays the total value of all first recurring invoices generated during that period.

When invoices are consolidated, only the line-items of the consolidated invoice that are recurring first for a subscription are included in the New Sales report.

2. How does the change in time zone affect consolidated invoicing?

Consolidated invoicing comprises 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 timezone.

For example, a customer receives a consolidated invoice for three subscriptions that renew at three different times of the day.

If the merchant changes the timezone from UTC to IST, it implies that it's the renewal time, therefore the renewal date will change for some line items in the invoice.

This shift will reflect in the current month's invoice. But the invoice amount will be the same. For all subsequent renewals, the renewal day and time are reset to the original.