Often the next step after signing an agreement is collecting payment from customers. The automatic billing feature allows you to have a Stripe subscription automatically created from the details within an agreement, and have your customer pay for that subscription immediately after signing an agreement.
​
​Note: Stripe supports paying by credit card, ACH or bank transfer, and more. These options can be customized in your Stripe account.

In order to connect your Stripe account, click on the Integrations link on the left navigation. Once there, click Connect Stripe.

This will bring up a Stripe hosted process where you can select which Stripe account to connect, or create a new Stripe account. Once you've finished this process, you'll return to Common Paper and your account will be connected. You can disconnect your Stripe account at any time by returning to Integrations and clicking Disconnect.

Note: This feature is currently available for Cloud Service Agreements and Software License Agreements.

In order to set up an agreement to use the automatic billing feature, start by creating a new Cloud Service or Software License Agreement from one of your templates. Once there, you can turn on the automatic billing functionality by navigating to the bottom of the agreement and toggling on the Include Billing Workflow option.

Stripe has a concept of Products, which are essentially what your business offers, whether products or services. Each Product can have multiple Prices, which include both a cost and whether or not it is recurring.

Our automatic billing feature integrates with these core concepts by allowing you to either select an existing Stripe product or create a new one. When the checkout is actually created by your customer, we'll either create the Product or use the existing one you selected, and we'll either match an existing Price or create a new one based on the parameters of your contract.

You can read more about Products and Prices for Stripe in their help docs.

Once you've turned on the billing workflow, either select an existing product in your Stripe account or select Create new product and provide a name for your product.

NOTE: This product name WILL show on the checkout screen that your customer sees, so keep that in mind.

By default, our automatic billing feature will create new customer records in your Stripe account with which to attach the subscription. In some cases, the customer may already have a customer record in your Stripe account that you'd like to use. In this scenario, you can use the Stripe customer dropdown to search by name or email for the record you'd like to use. When the subscription is created, it will be attached to that customer record.

You have the option to let Stripe generate an invoice immediately after your recipient signs their agreement. Or, you can generate a draft invoice saved in Stripe. Choosing the draft option means that you will need to finalize this invoice yourself and email it to your customer.

After your customer pays their first invoice, you have the option of having your customer automatically billed and charged for subsequent invoices, or having a new invoice delivered each billing cycle via email for them to pay. The default is to automatically charge using the payment method your customer used when paying the first invoice.

Note that when Automatically charge payment method on file is selected, Common Paper will automatically change the language in the CSA/SoLA to reflect this billing method, overriding both the Payment Period and Invoice Period selections, as shown below.

Common Paper automatically calculates what subscription should be created in Stripe based on the way that you configure your Cloud Service Agreement.

The automatic billing feature is configured by several different fields:

As you set up the various fields, you'll see a preview of how the system has calculated that subscription in the Cloud Service fees section. You should pay careful attention to this, as it is what Common Paper will ultimately create in Stripe.

As mentioned before, there are a number of situations that Common Paper currently can't automatically create subscriptions in Stripe, and in those situations you will see an error message to that effect. In these scenarios, we recommend using Stripe directly to create a Payment Link and switching to our Payment Links feature, or by turning off the Include Billing Workflow entirely.

Assuming that everything looks correct, you can send the agreement as normal, or save as a draft and send later. Once the agreement is sent, the normal agreement workflow occurs.

Once the agreement has been sent (but before it is signed), you can update the billing configuration for that agreement in the following ways:

In order to make these changes, navigate to the agreement's history page and click on the change link.

Note that you cannot change the actual subscription information here - in order to make that change, you must Propose Changes on the agreement or Void the agreement and send a new one.

Immediately after a recipient signs an agreement that has automatic billing enabled, they will be redirected to a special post-signature success page.

Your recipient has the option to fill out this information, or to send it to someone else in their organization to complete. If they leave this page without filling out the information, they'll receive automated email reminders every few days to return and complete this form. These email reminders will start arriving just after the recipient has signed the agreement, regardless of the start date of the agreement.

Once they fill out this page and if you've chosen to bill immediately, your recipient will see a screen for verifying their billing information. Clicking on Get your invoice will direct them to a Stripe checkout screen for the subscription that you've configured.

The payment methods you accept can be managed in your Stripe account. Common payment methods include credit card, ACH, and wire transfer. If your customer uses a service like Ramp or Bill.com to pay their bills, those services can typically make a credit card or ACH on your customer's behalf. Your customer can also download and save a copy of their invoice from this screen.
​
If you've chosen to save your invoices as drafts in Stripe, your recipient will still be asked to verify their billing information, but will not proceed to a payment screen. They will be directed back to Common Paper and told their information was submitted successfully.