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Sending and Customizing Invoices

Invoice Delivery Methods​

You can control how customers receive invoices by changing the customer delivery methods.

ChargeOver has two different delivery methods.

  • Invoice Delivery Method - This controls how on-time invoices or payment receipts are delivered
  • Dunning Delivery Method - This controls how overdue and late-payments, or follow-ups, are delivered

There are two different types of delivery methods that ChargeOver allows. Email and print.

  • Email - Customers will receive an email
  • Print - Customers are tagged as print customers, and will NOT be emailed (you can batch print invoices through the report center, or use one of our integration partners like Docsaway or Lob to automate printing and USPS mailing of invoices)

You can choose which type of delivery method to use for each customer.

Change a Customer's Delivery Method​

  1. Find the customer in ChargeOver
  1. Choose the "Edit" tab for the customer
  1. Click the "More options..." link for the customer
  • You can change the invoice or dunning delivery method at any time

  1. Save your changes

Customizing Invoice PDFs​

ChargeOver creates PDF copies of all invoices.

By default, the PDF invoices all use a default PDF template provided by ChargeOver.

The PDF invoices can be customized any way you would like.

Example Customizations​

  • Changing the entire look and feel to match your company colors / style / design guidelines / etc.
  • Changing which fields display and don't display on the PDF invoices
  • Adding or removing sections of the invoice (e.g. add a section to show other past-due invoices)
  • Adding or removing "Pay Online Here" links, company links, social media icons (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), etc.
  • Changing fonts, font sizing, text placement, and more
  • Adding terms and conditions statements, or other information

If you are interested in a custom PDF template, please contact us for more details and pricing.

Often we will ask you to provide a mock-up or example image or PDF of what you'd like the PDF to look like. If you or your designer can provide a mock-up in HTML, that's even better!

Was an Invoice Mailed?​

ChargeOver can provide you the sent date, carrier, tracking number, and expected delivery date.

  1. In ChargeOver, go to the invoice you want to find delivery details on
  1. In the bottom right corner of the invoice page, you will see whatever integration you are connected to displaying the initial send date

  1. If you hover over the module, you can reveal additional details like the carrier or anticipated delivery date

Emailing and Downloading Invoices in Bulk​

If you find yourself needing to email multiple invoices out to a customer all at once, utilize this feature!

note

The MAX number of emails you are able to send at once is TEN.

Selecting and Sending Invoices​

Viewing Invoices per Page​

You can control how many invoices you see on a page. The checkbox in the lighter colored bar at the top (next to all of the column labels like #, Invoice Date, etc.) allows you to select as many invoices as you want on a page.

In the picture above, the drop down option which shows 10, indicates how many invoices are showing on the current page.

If you wanted to view more than 10 invoices, you could select the dropdown and type in whatever number you wanted.

If you want to send more than 10 invoices at once, you will not be able to.

The maximum number of PDFs you can attach in ONE email or email in a batch, is 10.

Steps to Send All Invoices Selected​

  1. Click the “# Selected…” box at the top of the page.

  1. You will then be given two options to eitherSend one email that includes all of the invoices you have selected.

OR

Send a separate email for every invoice you have selected. This is what we call a batch of emails.

Send One Email​

You can send multiple invoices in one email. The end result will look something like this.

Send Separate Emails​

You can send separate emails for each invoice. To do this, you will be utilizing the Template Dropdown.

note

The template dropdown will NOT appear as an option for the emails UNLESS every invoice you are sending has the same Status.

This is what you will see when you select invoices with the SAME status’

Notice that the template dropdown option IS available.

When a template is chosen, it will select that template for all of the invoices being sent automatically.

note

You cannot choose different templates for each individual invoice being sent.

Example of different invoice status’

Below, two invoices showing Unpaid and Overdue Status’ can be seen. Notice that only the Paid invoices have been selected to be sent out together.

The Send Email template will look like this if you selected invoices of different status’

Notice the LACK of the template dropdown here.

Each email being sent out will instead use the default template for whatever status the invoice has.

In this example, there was no default email template selected, so there is no template available. Make sure to have a default email template chosen before trying to bulk send invoices.

Download Invoice PDFs​

There is also an option to download PDFs of the invoices.

Service Dates On Recurring Invoices​

ChargeOver supports a powerful template language which lets you customize each individual invoice, including showing the applicable service dates on the invoice. Regardless of whether you bill in advance or arrears, the end of the service period is calculated by 1 cycle - 1 day.

Billing in Advance​

If you bill in advance, you can use something like this in the recurring package line Description field.

Service for {{ invoice.cycle_pre_from_date|date("m/d/Y") }} to {{ invoice.cycle_pre_to_date|date("m/d/Y") }}

When ChargeOver generates an invoice for a subscription, the invoice will be automatically adjusted to include the appropriate service date. For example, if a monthly invoice was generated on February 15, 2016, the service period end date would be March 14, 2016. So, the service period would look like this:

Service for 02/15/2016 to 03/14/2016

Billing in Arrears​

If you bill in arrears, you can use something like this.

Service for {{ invoice.cycle_post_from_date|date("m/d/Y") }} to {{ invoice.cycle_post_to_date|date("m/d/Y") }}

For example, if a monthly invoice was generated on August 29, 2023, the service period end date would be August 28, 2023. So, the service period would look like this:

Service for 07/29/2023 to 08/28/2023

Date Formatters​

Within the Date(…) Block, you can use any of the following formatters.

  • d – Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros, 01 to 31
  • D – A textual representation of a day, three letters, Mon through Sun
  • j – Day of the month without leading, zeros 1 to 31
  • l – (lowercase ‘L’) A full textual representation of the day of the week, Sunday through Saturday
  • S – English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j.
  • F – A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March, January through December
  • m – Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros, 01 through 12
  • M – A short textual representation of a month, three letters, Jan through Dec
  • n – Numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros, 1 through 12
  • t – Number of days in the given month, 28 through 31
  • Y – A full numeric representation of a year, 4 digits. Examples: 1999 or 2003
  • y – A two digit representation of a year. Examples: 99 or 03
  • a – Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem, am or pm
  • A – Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem, AM or PM
  • g – 12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros, 1 through 12
  • G – 24-hour format of an hour without leading zeros, 0 through 23
  • h – 12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros, 01 through 12
  • H – 24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros, 00 through 23
  • O – Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours. Example: +0200
  • P – Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes. Example: +02:00
  • T – Timezone abbreviation. Examples: EST, MDT …
  • c – ISO 8601 date. Example: 2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00
  • r – RFC 2822 formatted date. Example: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200

More Examples​

  • Service for {{ invoice.cycle_pre_from_date|date("M Y") }} – Service for February 2016
  • Service for {{ invoice.cycle_pre_from_date|date("n/Y") }} – Service for 2/2016
  • Service for {{ invoice.cycle_pre_from_date|date("Y-m-d") }} – Service for 2016-02-16

Adjust Settings for Service Dates​

  1. Go to your Settings, then Invoicing
  1. Scroll down and you will see a "Show service dates on invoices?" and a toggle
  1. From there you can choose to bill in advance or bill in arrears

  1. Save your changes

If you check out the invoice, you can see the service date listed there.

note

The default of this setting is to not show service dates.

Invoice or Charge a Specific Day​

A common scenario for subscription businesses is to do all invoicing on a specific day of the month.

Bill on the 1st of the Month​

There will be no prorated first invoice if you bill this way.

  1. Click the Subscriptions choice on the left side menu
  1. Click the New Subscription button and choose the correct customer
  1. Create your subscription, choosing the Plan or Product and entering any other options
  • Do not choose the pro-rate unless you really want a prorated invoice
  • Do not choose any of the "free trial" options unless you really want to give the customer a free trial

  1. Click the Continue button at the bottom of the page
  1. ChargeOver will ask you when you want to start invoicing/charging this customer. From the Delay Invoicing section, click in the box and choose the 1st of the month from the calendar that pops up
  1. Click the Delay Invoicing button

An invoice will now automatically be created on the date you chose.

note

If you entered payment information (e.g. a credit card or ACH or bank account) then a payment will be taken as well.

If you want to invoice on a specific day of the month and create a prorated invoice for the customers first partial month of service, read our help article about proration.