Generate PDF Invoices for Membership Payments

One of the most requested features by our Paid Member Subscriptions users was the ability to automatically generate PDF invoices for every completed membership payment. This is now possible using the Invoicing add-on.

It offers an easy way to dynamically generate invoices for subscription payments, which can be downloaded by both clients and the admin.

Having an automatic invoicing system is a key feature for any growing membership site, that will simplify your accounting as well as offer an immediate payment receipt to subscribers which completed a payment.
Very few membership plugins offer an integrated solution, mainly because of the challenges it poses. We’ll go into more details on this aspect later and how we’re tackling them.

Features of the Invoice add-on include:

• Dynamically generate PDF invoices for each completed payment
• Add complete company details as well as notes that you wish to appear on the invoice
• Download PDF Invoices from the admin area and from the member’s payment history table
• Includes sequential invoice numbers
• Reset invoice number yearly (on new year’s day)

Below we’ll highlight how to set everything up on your membership site in order to have an automated invoicing system.

PDF Invoices Membership Payments Setup

The first step for automatic invoice creation is to have Paid Member Subscription installed and activated on your membership site. If you’re new to Paid Member Subscriptions you should check out the free version on wp.org.

After having the plugin installed and configured to fit your site needs, you’ll need to download and install the Invoices Add-on (available in the Pro version).

After activating the add-on, there are a few settings you need to fill out first. Under Paid Member Subscriptions menu, navigate to Settings and click on the Invoices tab.

The main thing to fill in are your “Company Details“, as they are required for invoice generation. After that you can add some “Invoice Notes” and move on to select and invoice “Title” as well as “Format“.

Note: The invoice format will need to contain the {{number}} tag in order to maintain sequentiality.

Then click “Save Settings” and you’re good to go. From this point onward every new completed payment will have an attached invoice to it, which both you and your customer can download.

The admin can download every invoice from the Payments table in the admin area, by clicking the “Download Invoice” link situated below each completed payment.

Members will have the same “Download Invoice” link available in the front-end, under the Payment History table.

Note: Invoices will be available for all completed payments that were made after installing the Invoice add-on onward. Invoices for past payments are not available.

Here’s how a standard invoice template will look like:

As you noticed with a simple setup we’ve managed to automate the generation of PDF invoices for subscription payments.

What’s next? Things on our to-do for the Membership Invoicing Plugin

Due to the many requests from our users we wanted to have an initial version of the Invoice add-on ready to use as quickly as possible. As shown above, it’s simple to setup and solves the main problem of automatic invoice generation for membership payments.

However there are still bookkeeping details specific to each country (simply put: taxes) which we’re planning to address in the close future:

• Handling Sales Tax for countries like US, Canada etc.
• Adding EU VAT support for EU based businesses

Most probably these two will happen in the form of add-ons which will complement the Invoice add-on functionality. The invoice add-on offers at this point an easy way to automatically create invoices, available for both the admin as well as paying members.

If you have any specific tax requirements for your membership site which you think should also reflect in the downloadable invoices, please let us know in the comments section below.