#riprock_best-practices
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vivid fiber
Hello
Apologies for the delay
pine silo
Hello @vivid fiber No problem at all!
vivid fiber
There are two types of Customer balances.
1/ Customer Cash balance: This is a balance that tracks funds sent by the customer using bank transfers payment method - https://docs.stripe.com/payments/bank-transfers
2/ Customer Credit/Invoice balance: This is not "real" money in a sense that no funds move between payment method and Stripe. But you can think of it as "store credits" that can be redeemed to offset future invoice balance
So if the customers are paying you using card or other payment methods then Customer Credit/Invoice balance is what you want.
However, in order to make full use of that -- you'd need to also use Invoicing API as you can't apply Credit/Invoice balance to PaymentIntents directly
pine silo
So lets say a service call is 100$
Customer pays for 6 upfront via an invoice of 600$ paid with credit card. I assume number 2 would be the way to go
vivid fiber
Correct
pine silo
Okay so basically I use number 2
Customer gets the invoice to pay for all the services up front. Then they just get a refrence invoice for the service, basically saying you were to be charged 100$ But you have an existing balance so no cost to the customer?
Am I understanding correctly?
vivid fiber
Yup
The future invoice gets offset by the credit balance automatically
You can test it out in testmode/sandbox just to be 100% certain of the behavior - https://docs.stripe.com/invoicing/customer/balance
pine silo
Awesome Thank you hanzo!
vivid fiber
NP! The only thing I'd call out here is this: https://docs.stripe.com/invoicing/customer/balance#working-with-credit-balances
- The credit balance automatically applies to the next finalized invoice to a customer.
- You ​​can’t choose a specific invoice to apply the credit balance to.
- The credit balance is in the customer’s currency.
- Customers with a cash balance can’t keep a positive balance. In other words, they can’t increase the amount due on the next invoice.
The second point is what most people forget the most
The credit balance automatically applies to the next invoice and you can't choose which invoice it applies to.
pine silo
Understood Thank you!