New Filter Options via API for Invoicing

Last month we released a new endpoint to send invoices via API to mimic the behavior of the "Send Invoice" button within the UI. This endpoint enables you to programmatically deliver ad-hoc invoices as well as the re-send of auto-generated invoices, thus giving you control of when to send out an invoice.

As we continue adding new API endpoints, we are excited to announce new filter options on exposed event types on an invoice. You can now filter for multiple event types on an invoice (e.g. issue_invoice, apply_credit_note, refund_invoice) using a comma separated list. Previously, you were able to filter by only 1 invoice event.

For more information, see our documentation here>

Xero Integration: Component Quantities Shown on Invoice

Thanks to feedback from our customers, we are very excited to announce an enhancement to invoicing with our native Xero integration! The invoices produced out of Xero are now updated to align with the Chargify invoice quantity per each specific component your customer is billed on. Previously, the quantity was set to 1 with the total amount of the component noted in the unit price attribute. The actual quantity was only available in the line item description. This added functionality improves the ability to view and track in Xero the components sold to your customers.

For more information on Xero invoicing, see our documentation here>

A/R Export Enhancements

As your company scales, having the ability to effectively reconcile your invoices becomes critical in servicing your customers, detecting fraud, and saving time and money on costly errors. Chargify's Accounts Receivable report breaks down outstanding balances into invoiced amounts, payments, and refunds. To provide more intricate detail for your finance and accounting teams, we are excited to announce a new export option to the A/R report!

The Invoice Application Detail export will allow you to select an Invoice Issue Date option. The date range will give you a snapshot of your invoices for a particular period of time and their exact status relative to a payment. In addition to including all invoices, regardless of paid status, it will also show their respective refunds, credits, and applied payments. The ability to reconcile invoices has never been easier!

For more information on the Accounts Receivable report, see our documentation here>

Backdating Issue Date on Ad-hoc Invoices

We understand that charges can occur outside of a normal billing cycle and therefore provide the functionality for you to send ad-hoc or one-time invoices. Many customers utilize ad-hoc invoices to sell services or items on a non-recurring basis to their customer base. We are excited to announce that our Product Team has made some exciting developments to these types of invoices! You can now backdate ad-hoc invoices using both the UI and API.

If performing this in the UI, you go under Subscriptions > Invoices > Create an Invoice. There is a new input field for Issue Date in the top right of the ad-hoc invoice within the UI. The issue date will be set by default to the current date. In order to back date the issue date, you will use the date selector functionality by clicking into the Issue Date input field.

Alternatively, you can also backdate the issue date via the API with the "Create an Invoice Endpoint". If no issue date parameter is passed, then the issue date will default to the current date. If you desire to back date, you can simply pass an issue_date parameter of any date in the past.

The primary use case for backdating ad-hoc invoices is when you experience a delay in issuing an ad-hoc invoice but would still like for the invoice to be due at the same time it would have been had there been no delay. As an example, one-off usage is incurred but not charged until 7 days later and you want the due_date to reflect your standard net terms of 15 days. In this case, you could back date the ad-hoc invoice to the day the usage was incurred and set the due_date to Day 15.

For more information on backdating the issue date on ad-hoc invoices, see our documentation here>

Business Intelligence Demo Video

Over the past few weeks, we’ve highlighted the powerful capabilities of Chargify Business Intelligence and how they enable you to get a granular, 360-degree view of your business.

Now, you can see it in action. Here is an end-to-end walkthrough video that will take you through:

Out-of-the-box metrics and dashboards
Cloning and customizing a metric
Creating a metric from scratch
Building and sharing a dashboard

Interested in getting access to Chargify Business Intelligence? Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or support@chargify.com.

For more information on Chargify Business Intelligence, see our documentation here>

Streaming in Third-Party Data with Chargify Business Intelligence

Chargify Business Intelligence enables you to stream in data from external sources (e.g. your application and tools in your tech stack) and analyze it alongside your Chargify data. You have 3 different ways to achieve this:

Adding Custom Fields

Custom fields can be used to enrich your Chargify data to enable more granular reporting and filtering of your subscription and billing data. Custom fields can be added via a few different methods:

Manually populate a custom field on a Customer or Subscription in Chargify. More information is available here.
Use our API to create and populate custom fields.
Use our Salesforce integration to update custom fields. Read more about Salesforce custom fields here.

Find out more about custom fields here.

Using the Chargify API Endpoint Method

The Chargify API endpoint allows you to stream in any third-party data (i.e. Salesforce, Zendesk, Jira, your application, etc.) to Chargify Business Intelligence. Documentation on how to create the endpoint and start streaming data from your own applications and other systems can be found here. Third-party data streamed to Chargify becomes available to query and visualize in the same way as our built-in data sources.

Apache Kafka Endpoint Method

Chargify Business Intelligence is built on top of the Keen technology (powered by Apache Kafka), giving you the option to connect over Kafka protocol programmatically. You can use the endpoint to programmatically stream external data to Chargify Business Intelligence over a widely supported and robust protocol. By leveraging the Chargify Kafka endpoint and stream mirroring, you can stream part of that data to Chargify Business Intelligence and analyze it with your billing data.

In the near future, we will provide tutorials on how to stream in data via this method using Airbyte, an open-source data integration pipeline.

Interested in getting access to Chargify Business Intelligence? Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or support@chargify.com.

For more information on Chargify Business Intelligence, see our documentation here>

Finance Report Enhancement

Tracking your monthly performance in terms of total sales provides you and your team a pulse on your revenue flow that can help identify growth opportunities and trends. Chargify's Finance Report provides monthly totals of your Total Billed, Payments, and Expected Payments. It breaks down Total Billed into Sales, Discounts, Taxes, and Credits.

To more closely align with the data presented, we are excited to announce a modification to the report terminology. In both the UI and exports, the Revenue fields have been updated to Total Billed less Tax as the report measures sales performance based on billed amount.

For more information on the Finance Report, see our documentation here>

Business Intelligence Custom Data Exports

Chargify Business Intelligence enables you to create custom data exports, so exactly what you need is all in one place. This saves you the time of having to aggregate multiple exports together and reduces the file size, making it easier to work with. To create a custom export, use the ‘Extraction’ analysis type. Extractions allow you to pick the ‘Properties to Extract’, apply filters, and set the timeframe. Each property can be dragged into the desired order.

Once you have finished configuring the metric, you can preview a set number of records, download the result as a CSV, or extract the result to an email. Extractions can also be added to dashboards to serve as a drill down that provides the raw data of a chart as context.

Interested in getting access to Chargify Business Intelligence? Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or support@chargify.com..

For more information on Chargify Business Intelligence, see our documentation here>

Proforma Triggers

Proforma invoices allows for proactive communication to your customers by providing a preview of their upcoming expected billing amounts, taking away any surprises once their subscription renews. Thanks to feedback from our existing customers taking advantage of proforma invoices, we have added some exciting functionality by announcing new proforma invoice triggers!

These triggers will allow for a proforma invoice to automatically be generated on set intervals of a subscription billing cycle. These triggers will allow you to select if you want the proforma invoice automatically sent to your customer at generation. For your annual subscribers, this will provide insight into what their invoice will look like 2, 4, 6 months (or whatever time interval you choose) out from their renewal.

For more information on proforma triggers, see our documentation here>

Sharing Data from Business Intelligence

Chargify Business Intelligence allows you to share data and interactive dashboards with non-Chargify users so that key stakeholders get the insights they need.

Sharing Dashboards
There are two ways that you can share a dashboard outside the Chargify application:

Public URL: Making a dashboard public and sharing it will mean that anyone accessing it will be able to view the data and filter it via any added Filters or Date Pickers. The data is read only.
Embed HTML: The second way to share public dashboards is by using the code snippet. For added security we recommend embedding this on web pages that have to be accessed with login credentials.

Exporting Data
There are two ways that you can export data from Chargify:

Extraction: The Extraction analysis type exports the raw data from the selected data source as a CSV. You can select the specific properties to export and apply filters to reduce the number of rows.
Download Metric Result: The result of a Metric can be downloaded as a CSV, an Image, or JSON. This is the computed result and not the raw data. For raw data, you can run an Extraction.

Embedding HTML