Billing a person's subscription to an organisation

Some organisations pay for their people's subscriptions — an employer covering staff memberships, for example. Organisation billing lets you record that on each person's subscription, so the organisation receives the invoice instead of the person.

The person still has their own subscription, plan and periods. What changes is who is invoiced: the organisation gets one invoice for the people it pays for, with a separate line for each person.

Turn on organisation billing

Organisation billing is off until you turn it on for your account.

1. Go to Settings → Finance & usage → Financial settings.
2. Under Organisation bulk-subscription invoicing, turn on Enable subscription organisation billing.

Until this is on, the Billed to organisation option described below does not appear.

Bill a person's subscription to an organisation

1. Open the person's profile and go to the Financial tab.
2. In the Subscriptions section, select Create Subscription and set up the subscription as usual — plan, start date, fee and any extras or discounts. See Subscriptions — creating & configuring.
3. Under Select Payment, choose Billed to organisation — Invoice the selected organisation instead of collecting from this person.
4. In the Billing organisation field that appears, search for and select the organisation that will pay.
5. Finish the subscription as usual.

In the person's Subscriptions table, the Method column then shows Billed to and the organisation's name, which links to the organisation. Opening the subscription shows the same organisation on a Billed to organisation line.

If the organisation is missing. Should a subscription be set to organisation billing without an organisation — for example because the organisation has since been removed — the Method column reads Billing organisation missing, and the subscription shows an alert of the same name. Change the subscription to select an organisation, or switch it back to individual billing.

Show a person's detail on each invoice line

An organisation paying for many people usually needs to tell the lines apart — by member number, for instance.

1. Go to Settings → Finance & usage → Financial settings.
2. Under Organisation bulk-subscription invoicing, find Include a custom field in bulk-subscription invoice line items.
3. Choose the Person custom field to show. Text, number and auto-increment fields can be used, so a member number field works here.

Each person's line on the organisation's invoice then carries that person's value for the field.

Invoice references

Some organisations give you a reference — a purchase order number, say — that must appear on the invoice. Rather than typing it on each invoice, you can keep it in a custom field and have SwiftFox use it automatically.

1. Go to Settings → Finance & usage → Financial settings and find Subscription invoice references (Use the current value of a custom field as the invoice reference for new subscription invoices.).
2. Choose an Organisation invoice reference field for invoices raised to organisations, and a Person invoice reference field for invoices raised to people. Leave either on No default if you don't need it.

When a new subscription invoice is created, SwiftFox takes the current value of the chosen field from whoever the invoice is for. Enter or update the reference in that field before the invoice is generated. This works for every subscription invoice, not only organisation-billed ones.

The invoice reference is separate from the invoice number SwiftFox gives each invoice.

Things to know

• Organisation billing is set per subscription. Two people at the same organisation can be billed differently.
• The organisation is invoiced; the person is not. Look on the organisation's record for the invoice and its payment.
• Changing a reference field's value later does not change invoices already created.