Orb integrates with payment gateways like Stripe for payment processing. Once a customer in Orb is mapped to the corresponding customer in the payment gateway, Orb can automatically pull in the relevant payment information.
If auto-collection is enabled for a customer or subscription, Orb will attempt to charge the default payment method on the invoice due date.In Orb, the due date and the auto-collection behavior are decoupled, enabling the following possible behaviors:
An invoice can be “due on issue” and have auto-collection enabled, allowing you to immediately collect payment at the end of the billing period.
An invoice can be due with delayed net-terms (e.g. 30 days), allowing you to collect payment in the following month. In this case, the invoice will still be delivered to your customer when it’s issued, so payment may be received beforehand.
An invoice or customer may have auto-collection disabled, in which case the customer will be liable for inputting payment on the invoice portal manually.
If a customer pays an invoice through the Orb invoice portal and Stripe has been connected to the Orb account, Orb will automatically create a Stripe customer and link the newly created Stripe customer to the corresponding Orb customer.
The due date of an invoice is determined by its “net terms”, which represents the days offset from the invoice date or issuance date, depending on the calculation method selected. This setting can be found and updated in the Invoices tab of your account settings.Choose “net terms” from the available templated date ranges in the dropdown, or provide a custom due date.This is configurable at the plan-level, but can be overridden per subscription or invoice. It’s common for enterprise customers to have extended terms (e.g. 30 or 60 days) and self-serve customers to have invoices that are due on issue (which reflects a net-terms value of 0).Unlike net-terms behavior, auto collection can be configured on a per-customer basis. If a customer is initialized with a linked payment provider customer, auto-collection is turned on by default, but can be manually disabled. Similarly, if a customer is later linked to a payment provider customer, auto-collection is automatically enabled. As with net-terms, auto-collection can be turned off for individual invoices.
Orb automatically syncs the default payment method from the payment gateway and displays it on the customer page. The payment method used for a given invoice is also shown on the invoice itself and locked once the invoice is paid to reflect the actual transaction.Orb supports all payment methods available through the connected payment gateway for one-time payments. However, when saving a payment method to use as the customer’s default, only a subset of those methods may be eligible—depending on the gateway. For example, with Stripe, one-time payments can be made using credit cards, ACH transfers, Stripe Link, digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay), and crypto. Saved payment methods, however, are typically limited to credit cards, ACH, and Stripe Link.For automatic payments (e.g. autopay when an invoice is issued), Orb supports credit cards, ACH transfers, Stripe Link, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay. If you would like to support any other payment methods for recurring payments, please contact the Orb team.
If auto collection is enabled and the invoice cannot be collected for the configured payment method, Orb will automatically retry the charge after 1, 4, and 9 days from the initial payment attempt.Orb also retries payments intelligently when they’re most likely to succeed. If the linked customer at the payment gateway does not have a payment method set, Orb will not attempt to create a dunning schedule. However, any time a payment method is initially set or changed from a previous method, Orb will create a new dunning schedule and immediately try to collect on the invoice even if the invoice has completed dunning or is not eligible for the next retry as per the dunning schedule. This ensures that payment recovery happens immediately.
Orb generates receipts when an invoice is successfully paid. Receipt generation happens at the moment the invoice transitions to the paid state, regardless of whether payment was collected via auto-collection, through the invoice/customer portal, or is marked as paid.How to access receipts:
A receipt is included as an attachment in the payment success email that Orb sends to the customer when the invoice is paid via auto-collection.
In the Orb dashboard, open any paid invoice to download the receipt and invoice PDFs.
In the customer-facing invoice portal, the invoice reflects a Paid status and remains available for download.
For customers using Stripe Payments, Orb can automatically handle invoices that fall below Stripe’s minimum charge threshold. This feature helps avoid payment failures and customer confusion for small invoice amounts.
The threshold varies by currency and matches Stripe’s minimum charge amounts. Orb uses these same minimums to determine when an invoice should be automatically rolled over.
The minimum threshold is determined by the invoice currency and cannot be customized.
Refer to the tax automation integrations documentation to learn how to use an automated tax provider to enrich your invoices with tax information.
Note: Some existing Orb accounts may still be on Orb’s legacy overrides behavior, which dynamically creates an entirely new plan to represent overrides rather than replacing the minimal set of prices and adjustments on the existing plan. If you’re unsure which behavior your Orb account is using for overrides, please reach out to support.
Because Orb does not serve as your invoicing provider when an invoice is synced, actions that cause the invoice
to be modified in Orb will not reflect in the third-party solution. For example, a backdated action that causes the
invoice to be voided will not reflect in the invoicing provider.Be sure to test this workflow when using backdated actions in combination with third-party invoicing solutions.