#bassRAWR - Setup Fee
tepid oasis
Hello! We have documentation about adding a one-time fee at the beginning of a Subscription here: https://stripe.com/docs/billing/invoices/subscription#first-invoice-extra
civic minnow
So that's my concern (i've setup numerous Stripe integrations previously too btw), is that our "subscription" won't really be a static value, since it's based on the user's ad spend
and looking at metered i'm not sure that would work well for this either
tepid oasis
Why would metered not work well?
civic minnow
my thought was to use kind our own "manual susbscription" behind the scenes and just manually create the invoices via the API
well because of this "15% fee" we want to charge on top of the total ad spend, plus from my understanding with metered billing it's more so around a "quantity" of some type
tepid oasis
That would work too. In that case you can add the setup fee to the first Invoice (or generate an Invoice just for it).
civic minnow
we want to keep it so it's all on one invoice and charge to the customer once per month, but again their ad spend will vary every month
tepid oasis
That's correct, metered billing is about charging based on usage, but it sounds like that's what you're doing? How do you quantify the ad spend?
civic minnow
Google tells us through their API how much the user spent total
ie "Joe Smith" spend $500 on ad spend this month
so our plan is to charge that to Joe Smith + 15% to cover our overhead and stripe fees
but it could be $500 this month and $557 next, etc .. not really "quantifiable" unless we set it static as "1 unit for $557"
tepid oasis
You could make that work with metered billing, but it probably would be better to handle Invoices directly using your own logic instead. In that case you have total control over what's on each Invoice, so you can specify one or more line items to cover the cost and fees and whatnot.
civic minnow
okay yeah that's what i was thinking just wanted to make sure i wasn't missing something
but we could use checkout to charge that initial setup fee (to also use redirects) and get the payment intent setup, right?
tepid oasis
If you did want to use metered you could make your units equal to 1¢ and then set the usage quantity to 50000 to represent the $500, but yeah, handing the Invoices directly is probably better.
civic minnow
yeah i think for us as the devs in the long run it will be easier and we can handle "subscription status" on our end and just generate the invoices through the API
tepid oasis
For Checkout, it depends. Checkout isn't going to produce an Invoice unless you use a Subscription.
civic minnow
okay yeah that was my understanding too with it which is what worried me
so if we just need to get a payment intent setup/customer setup, and charge a "setup fee"
do you think that is best done doing everything manually then?
tepid oasis
Well, can you tell me more about the motivation behind using Checkout? If you're using Invoices you can send them to the hosted Invoice page to pay, for example.
civic minnow
I think it's just because that's what we've always used for all our other stripe integrations, so the higher ups like having the whole "redirect and land on stripe to setup billing info" process
basically they want us to try and somewhat match it as much as we can now that we have setup with our subscriptions that run through checkout
but like i said i've always set it up through checkout (and then use API to handle manual things after the initial subscription/customer setup from checkout), so just trying to see what is the best way to get close to that since we're only trying to setup payment intent (for later manual invoices)
and the initial "setup fee"
so was hoping there was some way to do the "setup fee" in a similar way as checkout without the need for subscription
tepid oasis
I don't think Checkout is going to support your use case.
civic minnow
so it creates the customer and payment intent
okay yeah that's kinda what i was finding and why i came here just to make sure there wasn't something i was missing
tepid oasis
I mean, you can use Checkout in payment mode to create or use an existing Customer and charge them a fee, but that payment won't be tied to an Invoice.