Simplify Your Billing with Our Stripe Invoice Template for Management

Stripe invoice template for Management

Sending invoices with Stripe to your clients like this one here, where the client just need to click to make their payment with credit card or any other payment method on file, is super easy if you know the exact process. Watch this video and speed up your learning curve as I'll show you step-by-step how to set up everything within the Stripe dashboard for one-time payments. By the way, hi, I'm Sabine Biesenberger. If we haven't met yet, welcome to my YouTube channel, where I share everything marketing and beyond to help you grow your coaching business. And if you're already part of my community, welcome back! As I'm a very practical gal, let's get straight to work. Open up stripe.com in your browser and log in over here. If you haven't applied for an account yet, check out the resources in the description below this video to get started. They cover stuff like Stripes availability in your country, restrictions when it comes to certain business types and their pricing. For everyone else, you should see the Stripe dashboard and the sidebar navigation now. Let's quickly check two things before we get into the nitty-gritty. Checkpoint #1: The Developers section. Go to the "Developers" section down here and ensure that you have the most current API version installed. If not, you'll find a button over here saying something like upgrade available. If that's the case, click it and get the update. Checkpoint #2: The Settings of your account. Go through your account settings and make sure that everything is up to date. To do that, really go with a toothcomb through each of those sections. And I'll explain some of my settings in the video later on and show you which one I've chosen for my account and why. So if you're interested in that, stick around. Now, don't worry about that I have the test mode enabled here. Your account should be in live mode. Now let's get into the meat of this lesson. To send out our first invoice, let's go to "Customers" in the sidebar navigation. Go down to "Invoices", click it and click "+ New" over here. Then we're ready to set up our first customer. Or if you have already set up customers previously, they'll actually be in the dropdown menu, and you can make your selection. For the sake of this exercise here, let's create a new customer and let's click "+ Add new customer". And let's get all the details in quickly. [Typing] Once done, you can make the selection if you want to add shipping details, which are different from the billing details or not. Then we choose our "Language". Let's go with English here, and we need to choose the "Currency". Now, this is really important that you make the right choice here because the currency that you choose here is actually locked in for the client. That means you can't charge, let's say Jane Smith, once in AUD and then in USD and the next time in EUR. So, the currency that you set up here is the currency that's locked in for that specific customer. Not for your entire account obviously. Let's go with USD. And by the way, if you ever need some help, simply hover over the little "i"s and you get some additional details about what this field is all about. You can add an "Invoice prefix" if you want to, you can define the "Next invoice sequence", and then we need to set the "Tax status". So here we go with exempt, but simply choose whatever is the right selection for you. You can add a "Tax ID" down here. Once you're happy with everything, click "Add customer" down here. And we've set up your first customer. Now let's link a product to our customer. If I click in this field here, you can see that I can either click "+ Add new product" or I can choose from existing products that I set up previously. You could do that, and you can see our invoice would be more or less done and we could preview it and send it out. But as I want to show you the entire process, let's click these "..." here. You obviously wouldn't need to do that because you're just about to set up your first new product. So let's click "+ Add new product" over here. Give your product a name, [typing], let's say it's four sessions, then choose your pricing and then give this baby a price. Let's go with 800 USD. Once you're done, click "Add product" down here. And you can see the product is now linked to our customer. And if you made a mistake, you can always click the "..." here, switch product or price, set an item tax, or down here, you can actually add a second item, add a coupon or add a default tax. In this box here, you can either thank the client for the business or put something in there saying like 'if you pay this invoice, you accept my terms and conditions' and put a link to your terms and conditions in there. It's totally up to you how you want to use this box here. Let's go down to the "Payment Method". Now you need to make sure that this box is ticked because that says "Email invoices to the customer to pay manually". Set your payment date. I always go with three days. Then make sure that this checkbox is ticked too, which says "Includes a Stripe hosted link to an invoice payment page in the invoice email". Then click the pencil icon and "Manage" down here and make sure that all the payment methods you want to offer to your clients are enabled here. Once you're good with the selection, click "Close". Let's scroll down again, and maybe it's open in your case, maybe not, but just click the little arrow here and the "Advanced options" will open up. You can add some "Custom invoice fields" to your invoices or add any other field and add an "Invoice footer". Now, please make sure that you have a look at the invoice first. You can click "Preview" up there and have a look at what the invoice would look like and even download it as PDF so that you can have a look at what your client would receive. And you can see the PDF invoice would look like this one here. Now, for example, down here, you can see, you don't need to add an email address or a phone number because Stripe by default already added it. So make sure that whatever you'd add into the custom fields down here or in your invoice footer, that it isn't doubled up. Once you're good with everything and did the preview, and you're happy you can click "Send invoice" over here or simply click the "...", and you can see you have the options to "Delete the draft" or "View invoice settings". Now, as we're happy with everything we click "Send invoice". A pop-up shows up, and you can either add an additional email address here or put your own email address into the "CC" field. You can test that everything looks pretty and nice. And once you're happy with it, click "Send invoice" down here and the invoice is on its way to your client. You can see now an overview of the invoice and the details that you sent out. And if you click "Invoices" in your sidebar navigation, you can see that there is a tab saying "All invoices", "Drafts", "Outstanding", "Past due" and "Paid". So you can control and track which invoices have been paid and which you might need to follow up. Your client will receive an email where they can pay the invoice either with credit card, bank transfer or check whichever option you enabled previously. And it looks like this... Pretty sleek, hey. Once your client makes the payment, you'll get a notification. And then another notification when the money is on its way from Stripe to your bank account. As mentioned at the beginning, let's have a closer look at the Settings part. Before I walk you through that, let me know in the comments below this video, what you like most about the process I just showed you. I'd love to know. And by the way, if you're interested in sending out recurring invoices with Stripe because the client wants to pay in instalments or sign up for a subscription or a retainer package, I've got your back. Check out this video over here, where I'll share exactly that. Now over to Stripe again and straight into the "Settings". Let's start out with the "Payments" section here and the "Checkout settings". You can see that the only thing that I enabled here is under "Digital wallets". I said that it's fine if my clients want to pay with Apple Pay and with Google Pay. Now, before you enable that, make sure that you're happy with Google's and Apple's payment terms and conditions. I won't go into "Account information" and "Brand settings" right now because there is a separate link later on. So let's go up again. Let's click "Settings" and let's have a look into the "Billing" section. We don't need the "Customer portal" here, but let's have a closer look into "Subscriptions and emails". And that's actually a really long one. So, as you can see here under "Manage free trial messaging" if you offer something like that, I enabled the first one under "Customer emails". I included under "Business information" a policy cancellation link, down here, and I updated my "Statement descriptor" and enabled it here. Again, if you need to update it or have a look if you have it the right way, just click "Account settings", and you can get it done there. Now what's a little bit different in this section here is that you have a lot of sub-sections. Each time you make a change, you need to click the "Save" button here for that specific section before you move on to the next one. Because otherwise your changes won't be saved. So make sure you really click the "Save" button for each section where you change something. Now under "Prevent failed payments", I've chosen three days here in the "Upcoming renewal events", and I activated both of those settings here. I want to "Send emails about upcoming renewals", and I want to "Send emails about expiring cards". And if you want to see any of those emails, what they look like, what's in there, you can just click the little "eye" icon and see what it would look like. Again, don't forget to click the "Save" button. Now let's move down and talk about "Manage failed payments. I enabled the "Retry schedule", I use the "Smart retries" and I said I want to retry up to four times within a week. Now why one week... My thought was simply this one. So, if the credit card let's say is out of date or stolen, I just want to try it four times within a week. And then it moves to unpaid, which gives me a trigger that I need to reach out to the client and follow up to ask what's going on and what we need to do. I don't want to have him in my subscription or membership program for more than one week if he can't come up, or she can't come up, with a payment. So the next one is "Customer emails". I have activated this one here because I want to send emails when card payments fail and under "Subscription status" if all retries for payment fail, I mark the subscription as unpaid. Now you need to set up a little process for yourself how you track your invoices. And I really do it regularly. So that those kinds of things don't slip through and people stay longer in a membership or subscription than they really paid for. I'm really in close contact with the clients or the customers to figure out what's going on if payment fails. So that's why I've chosen those settings. Now "Manage disputed payments" I have the same setup, I leave the subscription as-is as I rather take it on myself and really figure it out with my client what's going on. Communication is key. The next one is "Manage payments that require a 3D secure". This is more of a European thing, and this is what I've enabled, for example here, under "Customer emails" and the schedule that I set up. Under "Subscription status", you can see if a recurrent payment is incomplete for seven days, and let's just open this one up, mark the subscription as unpaid, which again is a trigger for me that I need to follow up with a client. The next one is "Manage invoices sent to customers". I have enabled both and set up a schedule that I personally think makes sense. And again, if an invoice is past due by 30 days, mark the subscription as unpaid. I'm still in the test account here to do this demonstration for you so you don't need to do anything down there. Now let's move over to the next one, which is actually the "Invoice template". You can choose if you want to have it "Sequentially for each customer" or "Sequentially across your account", and you can type in different things like a "Default memo" and a "Default footer". And then again, under "Default payment terms", now in here, as you know it already, I like the three days after the invoice has been sent. Not sure why this one has been set to 30 days. And then under "Invoice payment page", make sure that this one is ticked and you can again click "Manage" and activate whatever you want to. You can see that's a really long list. But whatever you want to activate, do it in there. Once you're happy with everything, click "Save" and click "Proceed". Okay, so we talked about this section here. Now we don't need "Connect", "Radar" and "Sigma custom reports". That's a little bit more advanced. We don't need the "Atlas" section here, but what we need is "Your business" - really those settings here - "Payments and Payouts" as well. And again, you can have a look at "Compliance", "Reporting documents" and all that stuff, but we won't go into too much detail here. So let's now look into "Account information", which is really just everything that you need to type in about you and your business. That should be quite straightforward. Then we're talking about the "Tax details". It's again, your information. I can't really give you any tips and tricks here, but let's have a look into "Branding". Now "Branding", what I did is I uploaded my icon in here. If you have a logo, you can add it here. I updated my main brand colour, which is white - more or less the background of the invoice - and I added my accent colour here, which you can see here. The button should be more of an aqua colour; it's not... I think it's actually a bug within Stripe right now, but just simply set up everything in there, go to "Customize" and once you're happy, you can see what it would look like here on the top. Click "Save" again, and you're good to go with a nice branded invoice. Okay, let's now have a look at "Emails". When it comes to "Emails" that's what I set up. I've enabled "Successful payments" and "Refunds" because I really want to keep my clients up to date with everything money-related; I think that's quite important. You can, again, click "Billing settings" if you're not sure what you've entered there. You can go into your "Account settings" if you need to make any changes there. You can change your "Default language" and then once you're happy click "Save" again and you're good to go. Now let's have a look at the last one that I wanted to show you. "Bank accounts and scheduling", again, it's really straightforward so click it and do whatever you need to do in there. But now let's have a look at the "Payment methods". As you can see, there is a whole list, obviously everything in test mode for myself, but here you can choose what kind of "Payment methods" you want to enable. So in my case, I always go with "Cards", which is obviously accept the Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and so on. And I obviously like to enable Apple Pay and Google Pay as you can see I think I shared it in the first section that we walked through. Now, whatever you choose, make sure that it's aligned with how you want to communicate with your clients when it comes to any money-related things like invoices, payments or refunds and cancellations. Phew, we went through everything there is to know to wow your clients with a smooth and straightforward payment process. Because you've just learned how to send invoices with Stripe to get paid by your clients in a click. If I went too fast, simply rewatch this video as often as you like and press pause whenever you need to so that you can follow along easily. Should you be a transformational coach and want to set up the four most essential and lucrative campaigns in your business to get a consistent flow of coaching clients, then check out my implementation-focused program called C4 Momentum. Hop over to sabineb.cc/c4 or click the link in the description below this video to be the first to know when the doors open. Well, I hope you liked this video. So please hit the subscribe button below, give this video a thumbs up and as you're already here, why don't you check out my other videos here on YouTube to grow your coaching business fast. I'd be stoked. Bye for now and I'll see you in the next one.