supreeth4381

[sharp axle]

Hello, We create a Stripe Customer and Stripe Subscription(with a default Stripe Price of $0.0) to track monthly cycles whenever a user signs up on our product, as, our product relies on usage-based billing, we wouldnt know how much a customer would be billed for, at the end of the cycle. We then add invoice line items after the invoice is generated for the subscription, but when we do this, we see the default Stripe Price and Product of $0.0 is visible in the invoice, Is there any way to remove this ? Or is there a different way to approach this use-case ? Thanks in advance!

You could include that in the description, but it won't change the quantity labelling

For metered billing you need to report the usage before the end of the billing cycle to have it invoiced

Unless you're building your own usage based billing and manually creating invoice items, which is fine!

But you need to create those invoice items before the end of the billing period to have them included on the invoice

You also have the one hour draft period when the recurring invoice is generated to add items

Yes that base line will be visible and cannot be removed

You can adjust the appearance of this using the product description associated with the price

[bold goblet]

yeah we are listening to webhook invoice.created and then adding invoice line items from the usage records we have for that customer.

Is there any way to remove that base line item ? Or perhaps another way to track monthly billing other than the approach I am taking ?

[sharp axle]

If you're already tracking usage and calculating costs for line items, you could use the API to create invoices instead of using a subscription, depend on what you want

you can't remove the subscription-related line item though, so I'd use it to represent the plan/product name with a base of 0

[bold goblet]

but I take this approach I need to track the billing cycle myself right ? Thats the reason we decided to use Stripe subscriptions.

[sharp axle]

Sure, amkes sense

I think adjusting the product description to customize that automatic line item is your best bet

[bold goblet]

afaik I remember removing that threw me and error. But I can give it a try again and see what happens. I use a dummy Stripe Product now but its still not a good UX to see that in the invoice.

[sharp axle]

Sorry, i mis-typed -- you cannot remove it, you are correct in your recollection

[bold goblet]

ohh, there is no other option to track billing cycle if not using stripe subscriptions ?

also there is no option to add a suffix for quantity(say hours/GB) ?

[lime igloo]

If you want to track this on Stripe (vs. keeping track of usage and cycles on your end), you'll need to use Subscriptions, not just Invoices

[lime igloo]

No, this would just be displayed by Stripe as per unit. Any custom details should be added to the price name

[bold goblet]

even if we create a Stripe Price we wont be able to give a custom suffix right ?

[lime igloo]

That's correct, you'd need to add any details about the price in the product name

[bold goblet]

that looks really restrictive. Is there an option to create an invoice pdf out of band and then use stripe to charge it with customer ?

[lime igloo]

I'm not sure I follow your question. Yes, it's possible to create a one-off invoice in Stripe.

[bold goblet]

yeah even with a one-off invoice there isn't much flexibility in terms of structure(like adding suffix or changing column names) right ?

[lime igloo]

Correct

[bold goblet]

can the quanity field be a float ? Or does it have to be integer ?

[lime igloo]

The quantity of what?

[bold goblet]

Quantity in the invoice line item. Sorry, I should have been more clear.

[lime igloo]

I think you mean invoice item?

[bold goblet]

yeah

[lime igloo]

This has to be an integer