WPMU DEV’s Client Billing Makes Managing Clients and Processing Payments Hassle-Free (and Fast!)

Imagine a room filled with accountants, bookkeepers, and invoicing brokers billing your purchasers, amassing, processing, and immediately depositing their funds into your checking account. That’s what WPMU DEV’s Client Billing does.

Client Billing is an built-in answer that’s simple to arrange, simple to make use of…and utterly free!

In this text, we’ll discover the total gamut of top-notch options and present you how you can arrange and automate your shopper billing by integrating your providers, pricing, and purchasers, along with your cost processor account.

“Just now I input all of my websites and hooked it up to client billing, to see my MRR right there motivates me so much I think I will upgrade to the agency plan and push hard with business.” – Web Host Wizards (WPMU DEV Member)

Here are the subjects we’ll cowl:

There’s loads to cowl, so let’s dive proper in.

Feature-packed: Clients & Billing is Loaded

We weren’t kidding after we got down to make an elevated expertise out of the shopper billing and cost course of.

Look in any respect the options included in Client Billing:

• Bill Clients Fast – Create worthwhile subscription plans, and monitor your recurring income.
• Invoice with a Click – Professionally branded invoices, automated and able to ship in minutes.
• Clever Client Management – Includes the whole lot you want to monitor purchasers, invoices, and subscriptions.
• Profitable Plans & Subscriptions – Create tiered plans distinctive to what you are promoting, and maximize income.
• Personalized Client Portal – Branded, user-friendly entry for purchasers to remit funds securely.
• Streamlined Payments – One-time or recurring funds, the latter of which auto-charge purchasers after the primary bill is permitted.
• Per-Client Site Billing – Link subscriptions and invoices to site-specific services or products.

The above options are all a part of The Hub, our all-in-one WordPress website administration software.

If you’re a member, you’ve already received entry to this energy performer. And when you’re not, join – it’s free – and The Hub & Client Billing are included.

Configuring The Components in Clients & Billing

Because there’s a lot you are able to do within the Client Billing module, I wished to put out how we’ll undergo the touchpoints.

1. Connect your Stripe account.
2. Initial setup of purchasers and merchandise.
3. Branding and what you are promoting profile.
4. Create and customise invoices.
   

There’s a variety of nice materials to unpack, so let’s have at it. 🙂

Connecting To Your Stripe Account

Client funds in The Hub are presently made by way of the Stripe cost platform. Additional cost choices (reminiscent of PayPal) are on the desk for future inclusion, so keep tuned.

To begin accepting funds in Clients & Billing, you’ll want to attach your Stripe account, in order that’s our first order of enterprise. And don’t fear; when you don’t but have a Stripe account, you possibly can simply create one by way of the Hub’s integration wizard.

Login to your WPMU DEV account, then navigate to The Hub > Clients & Billing.

From the Getting Started wizard, click on the Connect with Stripe button.

Enter the Email and Password fields, utilizing these you need related along with your Stripe account, then click on the Log in button.

If you occur to have multiple Stripe account related to the e-mail deal with you’ve entered, they’ll be introduced right here.

Select the account you need from the listed choices, then click on the Connect button.

Continue with any further steps within the setup wizard. (If you want to begin over at any level, simply click on Return to WPMU DEV on the left facet of the display screen.)

Upon finishing the wizard, you’ll be directed again to the Getting Started display screen in your Hub, and prompted to pick the forex you need to use in your Client Billing portal.

Click on the field denoting consciousness of forex not being changeable later, you then’ll be capable of hit Finish Setup.

If you don’t don’t have already got an account with Stripe, the Getting Started wizard will immediate you to create one. It’s a fast and easy course of, which places you proper again in The Hub upon completion.

If you favor you possibly can go on to Stripe’s website, arrange your account there, then return to the wizard within the Hub and full the connection there.

Note you can solely join one platform to any Stripe account at anyone time. (This is because of Stripe’s policies.)

Initial Setup of Clients & Products

All of the instruments you want to handle the Stripe account related to your Clients & Billing, reminiscent of what you are promoting profile, your customized branding, the importing of merchandise and purchasers, and extra, are housed right here.

Let’s have a look at them now.

Managing Your Billing Account

From the Hub’s Clients & Billing web page, below Configuration > Billing Account, you’ll see the data related along with your Stripe account (title, e mail, and connection date).

The Payment Preferences part beneath reveals the forex you chose, in addition to the enterprise title that can seem in your purchasers’ financial institution or bank card statements.

If you need to change the assertion descriptor, simply click on on the title or arrow to the best of this row, and edit as desired.

Finally you’ll see Additional Tools on the backside, which is the place you possibly can import clients or merchandise & providers out of your related Stripe account, if there are any related to it.

To import purchasers or merchandise & providers, click on on Import or the arrow to the best of the row.

From the resultant popup, choose any purchasers you’d wish to import, by checking the field previous their e mail deal with. (Or, click on the checkbox to the left of the e-mail deal with header to pick all of them.) Then click on the Import button on the backside, which can mirror the full variety of purchasers you’ve chosen.

The purchasers you imported will probably be listed below the Clients tab, the place you possibly can handle all exercise related to your Hub enterprise. You also can Add New Clients from the Clients tab. (See Adding Clients Manually for particulars.)

Lather, rinse, repeat for Importing merchandise.

Pricing plans related to an imported product will probably be imported robotically.

You also can create new pricing plans from the Products & Services tab. (See Adding Products Manually for particulars.)

Understanding Client Roles & Access Permissions

There’s one other ingredient we should always have a look because it pertains to our purchasers: assigning roles.

It’s necessary to outline and perceive what the aim of a shopper’s website entry will probably be.

For some purchasers, you’ll need to enable entry to billing solely. For others, you could need to give entry to a few totally different sections, however not full run of the home.

And others nonetheless, you could need to enable them to view and edit the whole lot.

Assigning roles provides you full management over what views and actions purchasers can have in your branded Hub. This has the next advantages:

• Omits pointless distractions and muddle; purchasers see solely what you want them to see.
• Protects towards unintentional actions with doubtlessly dire penalties. (They can’t break what they will’t contact.) This provides you and your shopper nice peace-of-mind.
• Allows purchasers to really feel related to their account data, and see the worth of what they’re getting by way of you.

For illustrative functions, we’ll goal three arbitrary varieties:

1. Regular Client = wants entry to billing solely (to view & pay on-line)
2. Hosting Client = wants entry to billing and internet hosting
3. search engine marketing Customer = wants entry to billing and search engine marketing for his or her web site

Example #1 – Regular Client

Regular purchasers are those you’ll be doing the entire WordPress improvement for. You’ll present stories, do website edits, and run the complete present. The solely factor these purchasers will want is entry to billing data.

Therefore, you simply need them to have the ability to pay their invoices.

Clients & Billing within the Hub comes with three pre-established system roles, that are:

View All & Access Billing: shopper can entry and handle their billing and view website information.

Edit All & Access Billing: shopper can view, edit, and take motion concerning something on their website and handle their very own billing.

Access Billing Only: shopper can view and handle their very own billing.

These preset roles can’t be edited or altered; that’s the place customized roles come into play (which we’ll get into later).

Navigate to The Hub > Clients & Billing > Clients > Roles, and choose Access Billing Only.

Based on the premise that our Regular Client kind might want to Access Billing Only, we’re going to pick that as our default by clicking the Make default textual content in its row.

Now once you add new purchasers, it’s already established that that is their position. Of course that is editable ought to we have to change it at any time.

Example #2 – Hosting Client

This shopper plans on focusing a few of their enterprise on internet hosting along with billing. For this case, the shopper would want entry to the next 4 areas:

• Sites — to view the record of web sites
• Hosting — to view the internet hosting choices
• Site Billing – to view billing at website stage
• Access Billing – to view the Billing tab and pay invoices from both the location billing or the worldwide billing tab

Start by clicking on + Create New Role.

Give it a Name (on this instance, we’ll name it ‘Hosting’) and choose what entry the shopper can have. We’ll allow the 4 areas as listed above.

Customize even additional when clicking on every class dropdown. You can choose View & Edit, View Only, or Custom.

If you choose Custom, right here’s a have a look at all of the choices you could possibly choose for the shopper to have entry to in customized position creation, pertaining to Hosting.

Customize additional by clicking the dropdown in every particular class (Staging, Analytics, Logs, Emails, and so on), and choosing any/the entire choices.

Here’s what Staging seems to be like:

Once you could have the whole lot personalized, click on Save – and that’s it! You now have a brand new, personalized position you possibly can assign to any shopper.

Example #3 – search engine marketing Customer

This shopper desires to view search engine marketing particulars, along with billing. We can take the identical strategy we simply took with our internet hosting purchasers: create a brand new position, title it, and choose search engine marketing as an possibility out there to the shopper.

Specifically for this case, entry to the next 4 areas would must be enabled:

• Sites — to view the record of web sites
• search engine marketing — to view the search engine marketing choices
• Site Billing – to view billing at website stage
• Access Billing – to view the Billing tab and pay invoices from both the location billing or the worldwide billing tab

If you select to customise your search engine marketing choices to your shopper, they’ll be capable of view search engine marketing data, run new search engine marketing Crawl, Apply config – principally something you choose right here in permissions.

Hit Save, and the brand new position is now out there.

Of course, this was only a demo of three random shopper varieties. You can arrange ANY shopper kind and customise it to suit your enterprise wants.

For extra data on establishing Users & Roles in The Hub, see How to Simply Set Up Users & Roles in The Hub for You and Your Clients.

Customizing Your Emails

Prior to inviting our purchasers to the portal, let’s customise the emails we’ll be sending.

If you’d like, you possibly can configure an SMTP plugin that permits you to allow your personal area deal with because the sender e mail. That would end in a from deal with like this: [email protected]

While your personal area because the from deal with is essentially the most skilled, it isn’t required. Without any adjustments, your from addresses will probably be one thing like these:

You can use any SMTP plugin of your alternative; we advocate our (free!) Branda plugin, which handles this job with ease, and comes absolutely loaded with further white-labeling options. Check out this how-to guide on activating SMTP mode in Branda, and this helpful walk-through on SMTP setup through Gmail.

There are a variety of totally different emails which might be despatched from The Hub Client to you and to your purchasers, relying on numerous triggers.

Emails that come to you may be branded with WPMU DEV, whereas emails that go to your purchasers will probably be branded with the emblem & colours arrange in your Business Profile.

Two further informational items will be included or excluded out of your e mail notifications:

• Business Branding – toggle to your emblem & model coloration (from Business Profile).
• Emails Footer Note – add a customized message on the backside of all emails.

Here is an instance of an e mail your purchasers may get:

Of course any of the placeholder textual content in double brackets could be auto populated by the related information in your hub earlier than it’s despatched to you or your shopper.

Alright, roles have been thought-about and created accordingly, emails have been formatted… let’s put the ending touches on our enterprise profile.

Branding and Your Business Profile

Break out the logos and coloration codes! We’re going to make these billing supplies our personal.

From the Configure display screen, click on on the Business Profile tab.

In the Branding part, you’ll determine on the branding that can seem in what you are promoting invoices, emails, and billing receipts. It takes just a few seconds and minimal clicks.

Click on the best facet of the Brand Logo row to add your visible id; likewise on Brand Color, to pick your shade match through coloration selector field or hex code.

The emblem you choose can even seem within the prime proper nook of your purchasers’ profile menu after they log into your Hub through WPMU DEV.

Now we’ll add our enterprise coordinates within the Business Info part – which can seem in any shopper paperwork you produce.

Simply click on on Add or the arrow to the best of any row, and you’ll be capable of enter each out there subject. (This data can have been imported if it was arrange in your Stripe account, however is at all times absolutely editable.)

If you created customized fields to your Business Profile, they may seem beneath the primary Business Info, below Additional Info.

To add or edit customized fields, click on on the Custom Fields tab, and enter as many further objects as you’d like in Business, and/or Client Profiles.

Creating and Customizing Invoices

Now that we’ve received our documentation branding in place, let’s create an bill that makes use of it.

This is what you’ll ship to your precise purchasers, and there’s loads you possibly can personalize.

Under Configurations, click on on Customize Invoices. Click on any of the arrows or toggle buttons from the right-side menu column.

You’ll be capable of choose your numbering format, add a footer observe, select default language, add a emblem, model coloration, enterprise title, and shopper data, in addition to any customized fields you could have added.

When you’ve received the content material the way in which you need it, click on on the Preview Sample button for a fast look-see, and it would open in PDF format.

With an Invoice template created, let’s make one for a selected shopper.

Click on the + Bill Client button on the prime of the web page.

From the modal popup, take the next actions:

1. Select the Client from the dropdown.
2. Select the Website from the dropdown (non-obligatory).
3. Select a Product/Plan from the dropdown, and change the amount if desired.

   

4. Add one other Product/Plan if desired; repeat this step as wanted.
5. Add a Tax if desired, and repeat this step as wanted.
6. Click the blue Continue button.

This will open the bill that you simply’ve created so far. You can test and see if the content material is as you’d prefer it to be, and add a observe if desired.

At this level, you possibly can Preview the bill, Save as Draft, or Send Invoice.

Click Send Invoice, and we’ll ship a white-labeled e mail to the shopper you chose. From the Invoices tab, you’ll be capable of see it listed now, with standing Payment Due.

Here is the e-mail your shopper will see:

The shopper can merely click on on the Pay Invoice hyperlink within the e mail, and it would take them to your branded hub, the place they will rapidly & simply remit cost to you.

That’s a wrap on the preliminary arrange and configurations in Clients & Billing. Now we’ll transfer on to…

Upkeep and Management of Clients and Billing in The Hub

We’ve accomplished the entire preliminary steps in Clients & Billing! Now you possibly can rapidly and simply invoice purchasers, gather funds, and handle your clients, all from one handy space.

Of course you’ll need to regularly handle this content material – from shopper contact data adjustments, to invoicing and cost standing adjustments, and your personal enterprise particulars as properly.

We’ll have a look at what’s concerned within the continued administration of those options, so we will preserve all of our data present.

Overview Summary

The Overview part in Clients & Billing permits you to see a collective abstract of key information and settings in your portal.

One of the best issues about Client Billing within the Hub, in my view, is the power to get to the whole lot you need nearly immediately.

The Overview part provides you an at-a-glance, sectioned view of crucial particulars, in addition to a path to entry these components on the spot. Revenue, merchandise & providers, purchasers, account configs, billing actions – it’s all right here.

This is a intelligent comfort that makes it a stand-out.

Let’s take a better have a look at the displayed sections within the Overview.

Revenue

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) – the mixed complete month-to-month income from all energetic subscriptions, no matter billing durations
• Active Subscriptions – the full variety of energetic subscriptions from all purchasers
• Net Billing – the mixed complete quantity billed for all subscriptions and different merchandise (excluding refunds)

Clients

This module shows three objects:

• Total Clients – the full of all energetic, inactive, & pending purchasers
• Average Billing per Client – Net Billing divided by complete variety of purchasers
• Clients with Active Subscriptions– the full variety of purchasers with energetic subs

All of the abstract totals above don’t embody any taxes.

To see the total record of Clients in your billing portal, click on View All.

Products & Services

This module shows three objects:

• Total Products/Services – the full variety of merchandise & providers mixed, together with these with no pricing plans connected
• One Time Plans – the full variety of energetic one-time pricing plans
• Recurring Plans – the full variety of energetic recurring pricing plans

To see the Products & Services part in your billing portal, click on View All.

Configurations

This module shows the title of the Stripe account you’ve related to your Clients & Billing portal, and its standing. A inexperienced test mark verifies that the account is energetic.

Click any of the configuration line objects to see/edit the related data.

Managing Clients

As mentioned prior, purchasers should affirm your invitation to have the ability to entry their billing portal in your Hub.

There are three other ways you possibly can ship purchasers an invite: 1) once you’re initially including them; 2) from the dropdown menu in the primary shopper display screen; or 3) of their particular person shopper overview display screen. In all instances, simply click on Invite/Invite Client.

This will generate a white-labeled invitation e mail to that shopper, which can appear like this:

The Clients tab will populate with abstract data about every shopper, after you have added a number of to The Hub.

Here is the knowledge you will notice within the Client overview part in The Hub:

• Client Info – the shopper’s title, e mail, and Gravatar (if out there)
• Account Status – standing of shopper e mail invite acceptance (Active/Pending), or if invite e mail has not been despatched (Inactive)
• Sites – the full variety of websites managed by this shopper
• MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) – this shopper’s common month-to-month income for all subscriptions (excluding taxes)
• Net Billing – the full quantity this shopper has been billed up to now, together with taxes

You can entry shopper administration choices by clicking on the ellipsis icon to the best of any shopper row.

If you choose Manage Client from this dropdown menu, you’ll go to the Overview display screen for that shopper. From right here you possibly can view and handle all features of the shopper’s account and subscriptions.

Managing Products & Services

Now we’ll look extra carefully on the Products & Services part.

This is the place you’ll handle all of the merchandise & providers that you simply provide to your purchasers throughout the Hub.

If you hadn’t but imported merchandise within the Configure module, you’d be prompted so as to add your first one – both manually, or as an import from Stripe.

We already did that, however I’ll present you how you can manually add a product right here.

Click the + New Product/Service button, and enter the shape fields data within the popup.

Under Pricing Plans, you’ll need to create no less than one plan to affiliate with the product.

There are two billing varieties: Recurring and One Time.

Bill Every and No. of Billing Cycles solely seem when you’ve chosen Recurring as the kind.

• Bill Every is the time frame that repeated billing will happen; choices are: Day, Week, Month, and Year.
• No of Billing Cycles is what number of instances a shopper could be billed for a recurring plan earlier than their subscription expires. (Leave this subject clean if you need the plan to auto-renew till it’s canceled).

One time billing providers are used for making a single occasion of a service rendered, reminiscent of a arrange payment, or a website creation.

After you’ve added your first plan, click on + Add Another Plan for every further one you’d wish to create. You could make as many as you need.

Once no less than one product has been created, you’ll see it on the Products & Services display screen, together with its standing and the variety of pricing plans related to it.

In the beneath instance, we created a single product – Support Only – with 2 recurring pricing plans – Yearly and Monthly.

To handle choices for any product, click on the ellipsis icon and choose any possibility from the dropdown menu: View/Edit, Add a Pricing Plan, Duplicate plan, or Archive Product.

As earlier than, you possibly can handle choices for any pricing plan by clicking the ellipsis icon and choosing the specified motion from the dropdown menu.

The Archive possibility will deactivate a product or plan, making it unavailable for choice when billing a shopper. It received’t have an effect on any present shopper subscriptions.

When modifying a product or plan, solely the title & picture of a product/plan will be modified. (This is a limitation of the Stripe API, so we’re unable to change it.)

There is a straightforward workaround although. If you need to make a change to non-editable settings in an present plan, simply make a reproduction, then edit the specified fields of the duplicate earlier than saving it. Afterward, you possibly can archive the unique.

A observe about deletions: You can not delete a pricing plan from the Hub. That motion have to be achieved instantly by way of your Stripe account, with the caveat that the plan hasn’t been utilized in a transaction. If it has, then archiving is your sole possibility.

Subscriptions

Because of the fluid method of subscriptions, holding monitor of them is a necessity. Luckily, managing subscriptions is a bit of cake in Clients & Billing.

Subscriptions are viewable by shopper. To see them, click on on any shopper, then from the highest menu sections – Overview, Products & Services, Invoices – click on on Products & Services.

This web page will show three Subscription Types, damaged out into tabbed subsections, as follows:

• Current Subscriptions
• One Time
• Inactive Subscriptions

Current Subscriptions

This is the place you’ll see any present subscriptions for this shopper. The standing column will present as Active or Pending.

One Time

Sometimes the necessity to invoice a shopper for a one time service will come up once more. Say, for instance, you do one other website arrange, and must bill them for it once more.

When this occurs, you don’t must recreate the complete services or products. Just click on Bill Again from the ellipsis dropdown menu on the specified line merchandise. This will robotically invoice the shopper once more for a similar one-time product.

Inactive Subscriptions are any subscriptions that have been at one time energetic, however aren’t any extra. The standing column will present as Canceled or Expired.

You can simply reactivate any subscription for a shopper.

Click the ellipsis on the finish of the specified row, and choose Reactivate Subscription from the dropdown menu. When you reactivate a subscription, it would ship a brand new bill to the shopper and create a brand new subscription, which turns into energetic upon the shopper paying that bill.

Managing Invoices

The extra what you are promoting grows, the extra invoices you may be sending out, and the extra they may accumulate for document holding.

While this might create a cluttered mess of paperwork and file folders, it’s rigorously and neatly organized in The Hub’s Client Billing.

Everything is discovered within the Invoices tab of every shopper, and the content material included is straight ahead.

For a fast evaluation, a purple notifier icon on the Invoices tab header signifies the variety of presently unpaid invoices for that shopper.

On the primary Invoices web page, you’ll see a abstract record of the entire invoices for this shopper.

Click anyplace on a row to view the precise bill, or, click on on the ellipsis icon at rows’ finish to indicate the dropdown menu for different actions. Depending on the standing of a given bill, the choices out there will differ.

If you’d wish to learn extra about Clients & Billing in The Hub, see these articles on Fee Free Client Billing, and Getting The Most Out of Client Billing.

Client Billing by WPMU DEV is the customized labeled, cost making, subscription managing, e mail automating, keeper of all issues within the accounting realm of what you are promoting.

Ok, it received’t file your taxes, nevertheless it does enable for together with them on a shopper bill.

From branding, to invoicing, to automated emails, and in-app, trusted cost strategies, the options you possibly can provide your purchasers (and your self) in Clients & Billing are exhausting to match.

Offering each in-depth and at-a-glance views, you get to current visually personalized components to your purchasers, and keep them by way of your skilled providers (whereas we deal with the whole lot behind-the-scenes).

All that and extra is constructed into the Hub’s Clients & Billing expertise. And it’s included at no further price in your WPMU DEV membership, together with our 5-star, expert support.

Include our fast-growing, highly-rated hosting, or go for the membership solely – both manner, you’d be exhausting pressed to discover a higher worth. (Plus, full refunds are given when you’re not thrilled.)

Set your websites on essentially the most fulfilling billing expertise you’ve possible ever had!