By Stefan Chachovski
Last Updated: Nov 25, 2022
Reading Time: 8.5 min
 Invoicing Guides

Invoices for Thinkific
- Quick Start Guide -

Table of Contents

  1. Requirements
  2. Quick Setup Instructions
  3. How does it work?
  4. Configuration
  5. Testing

  1. 1. Requirements

    In order to send invoices for your Thinkific orders, you need:

    1. Thinkific account
    2. Invoicebus account
    3. Stripe account (used to collect payments for your Thinkific orders)

  2. 2. Quick Setup Instructions

    Using Invoicebus with Thinkific is very easy.

    All you need to do is Sign in with your Thinkific credentials and connect your Stripe account with Invoicebus. After that, the automatic invoicing will be enabled and invoices will start generating as soon as you receive a new order.

    Note: To prevent sending redundant payment receipts from Stripe and Thinkific, you may want to disable the "Receipts" option on both of these platforms.

    • For Stripe, go to email receipt settings and disable the option to email customers for successful payments.
    • For Thinkific, go to Support Your Students and select Notifications. In the upper left menu, select Student email notifications and toggle off the Receipts option.

  3. 3. How does it work?

    Invoicebus automatically generates a new invoice every time an order is placed in your Thinkific account.

    Customer Details

    Invoicebus tries to pull and display all customer details for the order automatically. By default, Thinkific collects the Customer's Full Name (First Name & Last Name) and Email address during checkout. These fields will be automatically displayed in the customer section on your invoices.

    If you need to display other details such as: Street Address, Postal/Zip Code, State, Country, Phone, or more, you need to collect them during checkout by using custom fields.

    Items & Totals

    Invoicebus automatically displays all items with their correct descriptions on your invoices and provides breakdown of totals.

    Taxes

    Invoicebus can automatically calculate the correct tax amount on your invoices and display it as a separate line in the totals section. Please note, the tax must be inclusive - the total price amount you charge for the course should include tax. You can specify the tax under the Automation Options.

  4. 4. Configuration

    To configure the automatic invoicing for Thinkific:

    • Sign in to your Invoicebus account
    • Go to Settings → Autoinvoicing Settings and click Configure Autoinvoicing

    You'll be prompted with a window where you can configure the following:

    1. General

      Payment Provider

      Select Stripe.

      Online Shop

      Select Thinkific.

      Autoinvoice Form

      The autoinvoice form is your default template for generating automatic invoices. The basic details about the look and feel of your invoices are fetched from here. Also, your company details, your logo, the invoice language, and more, can be all customized here.

      Once you connect your Stripe account, Invoicebus automatically creates this form. You can find it in the dashboard under the number "Automatic" and edit it, if needed.

      Note: Make sure to keep the total of this invoice greater than 0 by leaving at least one dummy line item. If you remove all items and the total becomes 0, the invoice will be marked as paid and could not be edited anymore in the future.

      Below is given a list of fields on this form that are customizable and non-customizable (dynamically filled).

      Customizable Fields:

      • Company info
      • Client details (see Custom Data & Field Mapping for more)
      • Document Title
      • Document Number (see Numbering for more)
      • Field labels, Column names, Column visibility
      • Tax (see Taxation for more)
      • Terms & notes
      • Template

      Non-customizable Fields:

      These fields are charge dependent and are dynamically filled for each invoice. Any data entered by you will be omitted.

      • Invoice Terms (Issue Date, Due Date, Currency, PO, Net)
      • Items
      • Totals

    2. Numbering

      Numbering Pattern

      You can use characters, symbols, numbers, and placeholders to define your own numbering pattern. Besides all standard placeholders, there are two unique placeholders that can be used to form a pattern: {count} and {rand}. While {count} is defined by the Counter property, {rand} generates a random number between 10M and 100M. For example, the numbering pattern: ABC-000-{count} where Counter = 1 and Increment = 1 will generate the following sequence: ABC-000-1, ABC-000-2, ABC-000-3, ...

      In case you decide to omit both unique placeholders ({count} and {rand}), Invoicebus will fall back to the standard numbering sequence: 1, 2, 3, ...

      Counter

      Even though Invoicebus automatically increments the counter for each created invoice, you still have full control over it. This means, you can adjust/reset the counter if you need to (example, every year).

      Note: If you reset the counter, make sure to add at least one specific differentiator in the numbering pattern that will distinguish the new sequence from the previous one. Even a single character or a number will do the job. Otherwise, duplicate invoice numbers might occur.

      Note: Modifying the counter will only affect the future invoice numbers.

      Increment

      Increment is a value by which the invoice counter is increased. By default, the increment value is set to 1 but you can customize it as you please.

    3. Taxation

      Here you can specify inclusive taxes, in percentage points, for your automatic invoices. Inclusive means that the price you charge for your products/services should include tax. Invoicebus will then calculate what percentage of each purchase is considered tax and displays it as a separate line under the invoice Totals. The tax will also be clearly shown in the Taxes section where you will have insight on how much tax must be remitted to your government.

      There are two types of taxes you can specify in Invoicebus:

    4. Emails

      You can fully customize the email template for your automatic invoices. You are allowed to use HTML and all standard placeholders in the message body.

      Automatic Invoicing Emails

    5. Custom Data & Field Mapping

      By using custom fields in Thinkific, you can collect additional details from the Customer during checkout and display them on the invoices in Invoicebus. This can be useful if you need to display more details about the customer such as Address, Phone, Tax ID, or more.

      To add custom fields in Thinkific, go to Settings → Orders & acccounts → Custom sign up fields (see image below)

      Thinkific Custom Fields

      Note: Make sure the Performance Checkout is disabled in your Thinkific account (Settings → Site → Performance Checkout). Otherwise, the custom fields will not be shown on checkout (they will be shown on signup only).

      When the performance checkout is disabled, the signup/checkout page will include all custom fields and it would look as follows:

      Thinkific 2-step checkout

      Then, in Invoicebus, you need to map the fields so they can be properly displayed on your invoices and throughout the system. You can do this under Settings → Automation & Recurring Settings → Configure Automation Options → Custom Data & Field Mapping

      Note: When a custom field name contains two or more words in Thinkific, make sure to use underline instead of space between the words in Invoicebus when you are creating the mapping.

      For example, if the field name in Thinkific is Postal Code, use postal_code in Invoicebus. Or, if the field name in Thinkific is Custom ID, use custom_id in Invoicebus (see image below):

      Thinkific Field Mapping in Invoicebus

      You are allowed to combine one or more keys in the mapping fields by using an empty space to delimit the keys.

      For example: first_name last_name

      If you need to display more custom fields beyond the default Invoicebus fields, you can include the matching placeholders in the HTML of your default invoice template.

    6. Batch Invoice Generation (for past Thinkific orders)

      Invoicebus can generate invoices for past Thinkific orders made during any given period in the past. For more information, please contact us.

  5. 5. Testing

    The easiest way to test the integration is to create a test course in Thinkific (say $5) and try to purchase it by yourself.

    If you would rather be testing with real courses and customers, you may want to disable the auto email option until everything is properly configured. This way Invoicebus will generate invoices into your account but they will not be sent out to customers. If everything looks good, you can email them manually later on.

    To disable the auto-email option go to Settings → Autoinvoicing Settings, Configure Autoinvoicing → Emails.

    Note: Don't forget to re-enable the option once the testing is over so that invoices will continue to be sent.

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