Is it possible to change the items on an unpaid Stripe order or is that locked in once created?
I'm creating an unpaid placeholder order along with a customer source so that when a user is ready to complete checkout they don't have to wait on multiple API calls when they click the final submit button.
If you are talking about the Orders API (which has since been deprecated), then no once you create the order you can't update the items in it. Instead you should just track the items in your customer's cart yourself and create the Stripe payment when you are ready to initiate the charge.
Related
I am currently building an application where we want to user Stripe Payment links rather then building our own version of UI to support the same functionality. However I notice that Stripe Payment Links create a new customer every single time. Is there a way to attach my customer id to the payment link so that a new customer is not created when they attempt to buy more then one product? I would prefer not to have to have a single user have multiple customer ids inside of my database.
Thanks!
Payment Links are not specific to a Customer record. The documentation does include examples of how you might append data to them to aid in reconciling payments to a specific individual.
If you want to make use of the Stripe hosted UI while still assigning specific Customer records then I would recommend making use of Stripe Checkout.
Quite suprisingly, it is not possible to automatically generate an invoice after as successfull checkout session with Stripe.
An invoice must always come before a payment in the stripe system.
I am left with having to recreate the invoice through a bunch of API calls fetching the PaymentIntent or the CheckoutSession that was just performed to recompute the data for the invoice and mark it as paid (not even sure I can retrieve everything I need)
This seems quite hacky... Is this the right way to do it or shall I just handle invoicing outside of stripe (quite annoying too) ?
just want clarify if you need Invoice or Receipt, because they are two different things
Invoice is something you send to customer to ask for payment (before payment)
Receipt is a proof of succeeded payment (after payment)
My understanding is that the payment is already collected upon a succeeded checkout session, so you probably want to send receipts to customers. To enable email receipts, you can go to Settings -> Emails and tick the Email customers about Successful payment box. Please note that emails won't be sent in test mode.
Let me explain a solution that you can use to generate invoices after payment in stripe. This solution is based on Zapier connectors.
There are three systems that we should connect.
Stripe
Zapier
Plumsail Documents
First, you have to set up a Stripe connection to Zapier. Go to Zapier, create a Zap, find the Stripe connection, and select "New Payment" as the trigger event. Then, connect your Stripe account with Zapier and make a test in Zap. If everything ok, go to the second step.
Second. After you have done the Zap connection for Stripe, go to Plumsail Documents, create the process, and make a template for your invoice.
Third. Set up a Plumsail Documents connection to Zapier. Go to your Zap (where you have made the connection to Stripe before), find the Plumsail Documents action, and set the Start Process as Action Event. Next, you have to select your process and match output data from Stripe payment with your invoice template in Plumsail Documents.
It seems a bit complicated, so you can read the article with a more detailed description of this solution. Also, there are screenshots for all processes.
As a result, you will get a fully automated custom invoice generation whenever you will get a payment in Stripe.
Max, product manager at Plumsail.
I charge Customers using this guide https://stripe.com/docs/connect/destination-charges adding amount, application fee and Service provider accound_id, after that I listen for "charge.succeeded" event with webhooks. If the payment was successful I generate invoice using this this guide - https://stripe.com/docs/billing/invoices/connect, but I get this error
"Nothing to invoice for customer"
Is it possible Stripe automatically to create Invoice for me?
Do I have to manually create this invoice and then make it paid.
Should I generate the Invoice before Payment or after Payment?
When you process a payment, Stripe will send your customers a receipt automatically per your email settings [1]. In some respects, this receipt serves as an invoice of services rendered, and might be sufficient for your needs. You can see an example of what a receipt will look like for a given payment by looking at a given payment in the dashboard (under the 'Receipt history' heading).
Now, if the receipt automatically generated by Stripe doesn't meet your needs (e.g., you want to be able to list more customer info on there), then you'll want to use the Invoices API [2] instead of the Payment Intents API to process the payment. Using the Invoices API also allows you send the invoice to the customer so they can initiate payment on their own [3].
So, with that out of the way, if you intend to create Invoices for your customers you need to first create Invoice Items on the Customer and then create an invoice off that Customer. Once you finalize the Invoice, Stripe will either process a payment automatically under the hood, or send the Invoice to your Customers via email so they can initiate the payment (through a Stripe hosted page). At that point you can send your customers a copy of the Invoice PDF. With this integration there is no need to process the payment on your own or deal with any other APIs. The Invoices API takes care of everything for you. These steps are documented in detail here:
https://stripe.com/docs/billing/invoices/create
To answer your questions more directly:
No. Stripe will only automatically create invoices when you make subscriptions. But, Stripe does automatically create receipts as described above.
Yes, you manually would need to add Invoice Items to the Customer, then create an Invoice off that Customer. Note that this step will also charge the customer, so you don't need to do that separately.
Invoices process the payment under the hood once they are finalized.
[1] https://stripe.com/docs/receipts
[2] https://stripe.com/docs/billing/invoices/create
[3] https://stripe.com/docs/api/invoices/create#create_invoice-collection_method
I am having a hard time finding the right webhooks in Stripe to use since it seems a lot of get fired off for multiple situations.
So my site sells a few items (like 10) that can be bought as a single purchase or a subscription (you get the item every X days, no SASS jut products). I am using Stripe's Checkout and Portal to handle all subscriptions and single purchase and those parts work great. Person adds stuff to cart, checkouts out, pays, we are all good. The issue is adding an order to our system from the webhook.
Look at this scenario: a person adds 2 single items and 1 subscription to their cart. They checkout and pay. When that happens we had the checkout.session.completed catching the checkout session was completed and we add those items from their cart to an order. The subscription re-ups after "X" Days we would listen for the invoice.payment_succeeded webhook to create a new order in our system. This logic is flawed though since invoice.payment_succeeded is called on the first order too so basically when they checkout our system adds 2 subscription orders: one from the checkout.session.completed and one from the invoice.payment_succeeded. How can we handle this?
What I would like to have is:
1 webhook to know when the checkout is complete and is only called then, which they do: checkout.session.completed
1 webhook that is only called when a subscription is renewed, not also when created, which I cant find.
If they dont have that webhook for subscription renewals only, how can I tell in the "invoice" object is the very first one so I dont do anything on checkout, only create a new order on renewal?
Instead of using invoice.payment_succeeded you should consider using invoice.paid, as it will also fire when you mark an Invoice as paid out-of-band (which won't happen with invoice.payment_succeeded). Both describe an Invoice, so you should be able to switch between them with minimal or no changes to your code.
You're correct that there is no Event specific to renewals for a Subscription only, but you can use the billing_reason property on an Invoice to determine why the Invoice was created. If it's the first Invoice for a new subscription the Invoice will have billing_reason set to subscription_create.
I currently use Stripe to sell my product, namely a recurring subscription.
I sometimes see a recurring payment failed to be completed, but Stripe, unlike PayPal seems to not support out of the box email notifications to let the customer know that his payment has failed.
So, my questions are:
How can I email my clients to notify them about their payment having failed? ( tell it as if I am 7 year old please, I am not a programmer )
Most importantly, how can my clients update their card information?
Thank you very much.
The best way to be notified when a recurring payment fails, and in turn notify your own customer, is to use webhooks. Specifically, you'd need to catch the invoice.payment_failed event.
Here is a recipe that explains how to send emails for failed payments to customers (using PHP): https://stripe.com/docs/recipes/sending-emails-for-failed-payments.
To update the payment information of an existing customer, you'd need to first collect the new card's information (using Checkout or your own form with Stripe.js), then send a customer update request with the new card's token in the source parameter. This will replace the customer's current default card with the new one.
You can email a link to the customer to update their credit card:
Use “Customer” tab to search for customer
Click on customer to open details
Click on “subscribed to…” (1st section of page)
Invoices: click on most recent invoice
“Details” section: copy “payment page link” and email to customer
This is now all done by Stripe's Customer Portal. Very feature-rich.
https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/integrating-customer-portal
After talking with Stripe support this worked for me to allow the customer to edit his credit card informations (May 2022):
stripe dashboard
customers
select your customer in the list
remove all existing payment methods of the customer
create a new invoice ("Create" button at the top of the invoice list)
add a new item with an amount of 0.5$ (minimum amount apparently) By indicating an amount of 0$ the window to indicate the card data is not displayed.
check the "email invoice to customer with link to payment page" box
review invoice (top right button)
click on the send button
Personally, I had to do this twice for the customer to see the form to enter the new credit card data but it finally worked...
I hope this will help some of you who tried the previous solutions without success.
You can enable a shareable link to your customer portal that customers can log in to by email address to do things like manage their card information.
Here's where you configure it and enable the shareable link (at the bottom of this page)
https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/portal