Invoice Settings

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Invoicing overview

We strongly recommend that you read our Invoicing & Billing Overview for a summary of Octane's invoicing features before diving into the configuration settings.

Octane allows you to automatically generate and send invoices for each customer at the end of their billing cycle. You can configure how and when customers are invoiced each month, and you can even integrate with third-party payment providers to send invoices using the provider's native Invoicing APIs.

This page is intended to explain the settings you can use to globally configure Octane's invoicing features. All of the settings on this page can also be configured on a per-customer basis through overrides. To configure billing overrides:

• In the Octane Portal, navigate to the "Settings" tab and select a customer.
• In the "Payments" tile, click on "Invoicing & Payments".
• Toggle the radio button for "Enable invoicing overrides", and configure the invoicing settings for the user as you would configure them globally.

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Global Configuration and Customer Overrides

Please note that enabling invoicing overrides for a customer will override all global invoicing settings for that customer. When you enable overrides for a customer, Octane will present you with the full list of billing settings as they are defined globally; when you click save, all of the settings displayed in the "Overrides" section will be applied to this customer.

If you need to override billing settings for customers in a systematic way, we recommend using the Update Billing Settings API endpoint to configure the settings for each customer programmatically.

Invoice Delivery configuration

This section covers the options that configure basic settings for delivering invoices to your customers.

The options described in this section can be found on the "Settings" page within the Octane Portal, under the "Invoicing" heading.

Enable Invoice Delivery

Enabling the Invoice Delivery feature in the Portal allows Octane to email an invoice to each of your customers at the end of their billing period.

On the "Settings" page of the Octane Portal, you can toggle the radio button for "Enable Invoice Delivery" to activate and deactivate this feature.

Invoicing via Payment Provider

To send invoices to customers through your configured payment provider, you can toggle the radio button for "Invoicing via Payment Provider" to activate and deactivate this feature. Note that you must have a payment provider configured to send invoices through that integration.

Currently, you can invoice customers using Stripe or Paddle.

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Current limitations to "Invoicing via Payment Provider"

Octane does not yet have a method to notify you if invoicing through a third-party payment provider fails. If you choose to use the Invoicing via Payment Provider feature, you should be sure to periodically check your provider's invoicing dashboard for invoicing failures.

Enable Tax Rate

To add a flat tax rate to every invoice, you can toggle the radio button for "Enable Tax Rate," and enter a tax rate in the text box below the button. The tax rate entered in this box will be applied to every invoice that has a default configuration.

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Variable tax rates

Features to configure tax rates on a per-customer basis are coming soon to Octane.

In the meantime, if you need to set tax rates on a per-customer basis or for a subset of your customers, you can use customer-level invoicing overrides. The introduction at the top of this page briefly describes how to configure per-customer invoicing overrides.

Grace Periods configuration

This section covers the options that configure the grace periods that determine when invoices are generated and when the generated invoices are sent to customers.

The options described in this section can be found on the "Settings" page within the Octane Portal, under the "Grace Periods" heading.

Invoice Grace Period

The "Invoice Grace Period" setting defines the amount of time that should elapse between the end of a customer's billing cycle and the generation of their invoice.

After a billing cycle ends, Octane will wait until the end of this grace period before calculating the customer's total usage during that billing cycle. This grace period provides an opportunity for you to validate the usage measurements calculated by Octane, make adjustments or corrections to accrued data, or add any data that hadn't yet been sent to Octane.

Payment Grace Period

The "Payment Grace Period" setting defines the amount of time that should elapse between when the invoice is generated and when the invoice is sent to the customer (at which point, the customer's payment method will also be charged).

After an invoice is generated at the end of the "Invoice Grace Period", Octane will wait until the end of the "Payment Grace Period" before sending the invoice to the customer or charging their payment method. This grace period provides an opportunity for you to validate the final invoice generated by Octane before it is applied to the customer.

Upfront Billing configuration

This section covers the options that configure upfront billing features that allow you to bill your customers at the beginning of each billing cycle.

The options described in this section can be found on the "Settings" page within the Octane Portal, under the "Upfront Billing" heading.

Enable Upfront Billing

The Upfront Billing feature allows you to charge customers the Base Rate of their subscription at the start of each billing cycle. You can toggle the radio button for "Enable Upfront Billing" to activate and deactivate this feature.

When this feature is enabled, Octane will still send invoices at the end of each billing cycle, and customers will still be charged for usage-based costs at that point. The invoices generated while "Upfront Billing" is enabled will contain:

• The base rate for that billing period.
• An Amount Paid Credit that reflects the amount the customer was charged at the beginning of the billing cycle.
• Charges for the customer's actual usage from the billing period.
• A charge for the next billing cycle's base rate.

Invoice Gauge Meters at Start

When "Upfront Billing" is enabled, the "Invoice Gauge Meters at Start" setting can be enabled to include usage-based charges for gauge meters. You can toggle the radio button for "Invoice Gauge Meters at Start" to activate and deactivate this feature.

When this feature is enabled, Octane will charge customers for gauge meters in advance at the beginning of the billing period. The amount charged will be calculated using the gauge's most recent measured value.

This advance-billing feature is most useful when you generally expect measurements from each customer for your gauge meters to remain fairly constant or increase over time. If you expect the measurements received by your gauges to vary significantly, enabling this feature is likely to result in upfront charges that differ significantly from the actual accrued usage within the billing period (which may need to be carried over as credit on the next invoice).