Credits and invoice auto-pay

Hi Hillel, not sure if this was asked before but here it is. I’d like to ask about the possibility of a new feature.

I have a few clients that would like to pay in advance (yay!) for their invoices. We can already ring up credits to any account, and I think it would be nice if Invoice Ninja could “use up” those credits whenever there is a new invoice.

If it’s a regular invoice, it would display a warning such as ‘Would you like to apply this client’s balance towards this invoice?’ or ‘This client has $XXX in credits, click here if you’d like to go to the Payments screen to apply these credits’. If it’s a recurring invoice, it would automatically mark it as paid, and if the balance isn’t enough to fully cover the invoice, then Invoice Ninja would apply a partial payment.

Also, invoices that are automatically paid via this method would not get emailed to the client so as to not create confusion.

What do you think about this?

BTW, getting a white label ASAP, loving Invoice Ninja as the days go by.

Thanks for the suggestion, we’ll consider it for the future.

I believe recurring invoices will use a client’s credit if they have any, you may want to test it though.

Will do.

…and no, Invoice Ninja currently does NOT apply credits to recurring invoices.

In my test it seemed to work, here’s what I did:

  • Created a test client
  • Entered a credit of $100 for the client
  • Created a recurring invoice for the client with ‘Auto-bill’ set to ‘Always’
  • Clicked ‘Email Invoice’

This created a standard invoice which was paid using the credit.

Hm… I haven’t set auto bill - it was my understanding that this was used only when a user saved his credit card details in the system. I’ll check this out.

That most likely explains it, we only auto-apply credits (or card tokens) when auto-bill is enabled.

Well, that should take care of it, then. But there’s no mention of this anywhere in the configuration screens, maybe you could add it somewhere just for clarification.

Also, just to be clear:

  • The customer will or will not receive the invoice via e-mail if it’s been automatically paid? I think he should not, as it would add to some confusion. Or at least he should receive a different notification stating that the invoice has been automatically paid (BTW, this is because I will be adding the payment buttons directly to the notification email to make it easier for them, so they don’t repeatedly call me to ask ‘HOW DO I PAY THIS’).

  • If the customer runs out of credit, will it be processed as usual? And how about partial credits?

  • If the customer is auto-paid using credit they wouldn’t be emailed.
  • The app creates a partial payment if there isn’t enough credit and emails the invoice.

That is great! Thanks!

And yep… it didn’t work. Today a client received notification of an invoice even though he had credit.

  • Is auto-billing enabled for the invoice?
  • Are you able to replicate the problem with a test client/invoice?