#karina_ - dashboard bug & Invoice Item
feral anchor
Hello, can you report this to our support team? https://support.stripe.com/?contact=true
silent marsh
ah ok
feral anchor
This server is more for API questions, support will be able to better escalate dashboard bugs
Thanks for reporting though! Really appreciate it
plush pebble
@silent marsh Please ask your question here. It does help us
silent marsh
oh, ok,
well, i is unrelated to the dashboard bug. but it appears when i create an invoice item via the create subscription api, its period start and end uses the subscription start and end, where as adding an invoice item to the resulting invoice after creating the subscription sets the start and end to be the same.
plush pebble
karina_ - dashboard bug & Invoice Item
silent marsh
the former is messing with our revenue recognition when it is synced over to NetSuite
since it is a one time purchase and the revenue recognition for that line item should be immediate.
plush pebble
So you are using an Invoice Item to capture a one-off charge as part of your initial Subscription flow?
silent marsh
and also, is there any movement in allowing additional parameters to the invoice items that can be passed through via the create subscription endpoint? such as metadata? so that the shape of that request can be the same as a normal invoice item creation call?
yes. a setup fee basically
plush pebble
So what about the timing of the one-off charge is not behaving as you expect?
With respect to metadata on Subscription items during Subscription creation, that is currently possible here:
https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions/create#create_subscription-items-metadata
Is there a different set of parameters you are expecting?
silent marsh
sorry, no, not metadata on subscription item, but metadata on one off invoice items
plush pebble
But for one-off invoice items you create them prior to creating the subscription and the Invoice picks them up. You can assign metadata during that API call as well
https://stripe.com/docs/api/invoiceitems/create#create_invoiceitem-metadata
silent marsh
the full backstory is that setup fees can come with all sort of custom pricing, but we want it to tie back to one item in netsuite, and we can achieve this by adding metadata to the setup fee.
right, we do something similar to that already. but we are constantly adding lines now for other things like discounting. so this has slowed our endpoint down to be multiple seconds to subscribe
and the timing of the one off charge is that it is setting the period start and end of that item to match the start and end of the full period of the subscription item
but when creating the invoice item separately, it sets the start and end to the same time
plush pebble
Your last two sentences are confusing me a bit. I thought separate invoice items were how you are handling one-off charges
silent marsh
yes, right now we are making a separate call to create one off charges. and it's start and end are being set as expected (where start and end match)
but when i am trying to create these invoice items via the subscription create the dates are not correct.
i am investigating speeding up this endpoint because the multiple calls to stripe is really slowing it down 😦
plush pebble
Right, when you add these to Subscription Items they are considered part of the subscription itself, not one-off charges. That is not a valid approach to creating one-off charges.
silent marsh
i am not adding them to subscription items 🤔
plush pebble
Then I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by creating them via subscription create. Do you have an API request you could share with me? Here's how you can find a request ID: https://support.stripe.com/questions/finding-the-id-for-an-api-request
plush pebble
Okay I was doing some digging and from what I can see this is the intended behavior of the data pasedd to add_invoice_items.
They behave like normal Subscription Items but only for the first invoice
Adding the ability to append metadata is a logged feature request but unfortunately I don't have an ETA for that
silent marsh
so there is no way to override that? because apparently in the financial world, that is wrong in terms of revenue recognition. (this is where things get fuzzy because i'm digging into this on behalf of the accounting/reporting team)
for accounting, a one time fee like that must be recognized immediately. which is different from a recurring item which should be recognized over time.
plush pebble
Yes that is understandable.
silent marsh
i guess... can i log a ticket for that?
plush pebble
I can bump the feature request, stating that is is blocking you from proper revenue recognition. This adds weight when the teams consider what to prioritize