Getting started
The Billing Platform lets you send invoices, collect payments, and manage customers across multiple companies or brands from a single account. If you run one business or twenty, it all works the same way.
How it fits together
There are four main concepts in the platform, and they nest quite neatly:
- Organisations represent your companies or brands. You might have one, or you might have a dozen. Each organisation has its own customers, invoices, branding, and payment settings. Data is completely isolated between them.
- Customers are the people or businesses you invoice. They belong to a single organisation. If the same company appears under two of your brands, that's two separate customer records (which is usually what you want).
- Invoices are scoped to an organisation and tied to a customer. They contain line items, tax calculations, and a due date. You can create them manually, via the API, or on a recurring schedule.
- Payments are recorded against invoices. Card payments collected through the hosted payment page are tracked automatically. Bank transfers and other offline payments can be logged manually.
An organisation is a container. Everything else lives inside it. If you want separate invoice numbering, different branding, or distinct payment methods per brand, create a separate organisation for each one.
Your first invoice in five steps
Here's the quickest path from a fresh account to a sent invoice:
- Create an organisation. Give it a name, set the default currency, and add your company address. This takes about a minute.
- Configure your branding. Upload your logo and set your brand colour. This is what your customers will see on invoices and payment pages.
- Add a customer. You need a name and email address at minimum. The email is where invoices will be delivered.
- Create an invoice. Add your line items, set a tax rate if applicable, and choose a due date. The invoice is created as a draft so you can review it first.
- Send it. Hit send and the customer receives a branded email with a link to view the invoice and pay online. That's it.
The whole process takes about ten minutes the first time. Subsequent invoices are quicker because your organisation, branding, and customers are already set up.
Dashboard vs API
Everything you can do in the dashboard, you can also do via the API. The dashboard is fine for day-to-day billing tasks, but if you want to automate invoice creation, sync payment data with your accounting software, or build billing into your own product, the API is where you'll want to look.
Both the dashboard and the API use the same underlying system, so changes made in one are immediately reflected in the other. You can create an invoice via the API and then review it in the dashboard before sending, for example.