November 2024

Introducing Omnichannel Subscriptions (EAP)

Chargebee introduces Omnichannel Subscriptions, which allows you to create a single source of truth for subscription purchases across Apple & web storefronts, ensuring a seamless cross-platform experience for your users. The omnichannel subscription resource unifies subscription data from various platforms, offering you a consolidated view of customers and subscriptions across multiple channels.

This solution is an enhanced version of the current mobile subscription solution, where external marketplace subscriptions are decoupled from the subscriptions in Chargebee and solely managed with webhook events from an external source such as Apple. Learn more about omnichannel events.

Future enhancements will include support for subscriptions from Google Play, Amazon Appstore, TV stores, and cloud marketplaces, enabling sales across multiple channels and driving revenue growth.

Why is this important? Launching your business across multiple marketplaces can be complex, requiring significant R&D to understand each store's billing nuances and building a backend infrastructure to deliver a unified experience for end users accessing your offering from any store. It also presents challenges in reporting and providing real-time customer support.

Chargebee's omnichannel subscriptions streamline these processes, helping you address these challenges and go live quickly on various marketplaces. Learn more about use cases that you can solve using this solution.

How can you use it? To leverage this capability, follow the below steps:

• Connect your Apple App Store account to Chargebee.
• Record a purchase made on Apple using record a purchase API.
• Consume the omnichannel subscription webhook events to provision the content and generate reports.
• View all your omnichannel subscriptions in Chargebee.

Note: Omnichannel Subscription is in early access. Submit a request to enable this feature.

Custom fields for features

Chargebee now lets you create and manage custom fields for features directly in the interface. Use these fields to capture additional data, helping you better manage entitlements.

Why is this important? Custom fields enable you to capture feature-specific data beyond default fields, align data with business or compliance needs, and use the captured information to deliver more personalized feature offerings.

How can you use it? To create custom fields, navigate to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Custom Fields in Chargebee and create custom fields that capture the data you need. Additionally, you can update custom fields, clean up unused fields by archiving them (to preserve data history) or delete them if no longer needed. Read more.

Pricing Table: Add legal text to your plan cards

We've introduced a text editor that allows you to add custom text beneath the buttons on your plan cards. This feature is designed at the plan level, giving you the flexibility to display unique information such as legal text or terms and conditions for each plan.

Why is this important?

This enhances transparency for your customers and helps meet specific regulatory or compliance obligations. The collapsible editor keeps the interface tidy while allowing you to maintain full control over the display of this crucial information.

How can you use it?

Log in to Chargebee Pricing Table > Click the plan name under Manage Plans and use the Text Block editor to input and format your text, and optionally add hyperlinks to detailed documents.

Transfer tax configurations across entities

Chargebee now enables you to transfer third-party tax configurations, including services like Anrok and Vertex, from one entity to another. This feature allows you to move key setup details, such as company codes or API keys, reducing the need to configure each entity manually from scratch.

Why is this important?

Setting up tax configurations manually for every entity can be time-consuming and prone to errors. This feature helps you save time and ensures consistency by transferring tax-related settings in bulk. It simplifies multi-entity management and ensures a more efficient setup process, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.

How can you use it?

To use this feature, navigate to the Settings page and locate the Taxes Transfer Entity Configuration option under the Taxes section. Enable the checkbox to transfer the third-party tax configurations.

Full-Page Checkout: Guest checkout for existing users

This update introduces a guest checkout option for your existing customers. When enabled, returning users identified through Chargebee authentication can either log in with a password/OTP or proceed as guests.

Why is this important?

Empower your returning customers with greater choice during checkout. By letting them decide between logging in or continuing as a guest, you can reduce friction, improve conversion rates, and cater to diverse user preferences.

How can you use it?

To enable this feature, navigate to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Checkout & Self-Serve Portal > Configuration > Enable the Allow guest checkout toggle. Once enabled, the checkout flow will present the guest option to identified users.

Remove TRNs across supported regions

You can now remove your Tax Registration Number(TRN) at both site and entity levels for supported regions, including the US, EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India. However, certain configurations, such as VAT MOSS in the EU or Canada PST, still require a TRN and do not support this update. For countries with E-Invoice enabled, the Tax Registration Number can only be removed after disabling E-Invoice.

Why is this important?

This update provides greater flexibility in managing your tax information, allowing you to adjust Tax Registration Numbers as per your business needs. You can now maintain more accurate and up-to-date tax records, reducing compliance risks and enhancing operational efficiency.

How can you use it?

To remove a Tax Registration Number, leave the field empty or delete the existing Tax Registration Number and update as usual. For EU non-digital configurations, if a country-level Tax Registration Number is removed, the origin country Tax Registration Number will automatically apply if available. Note that Tax Registration Number removal is restricted in cases where it is mandatory for tax setup or compliance.

No tax processing for zero-dollar line items

We've enhanced the billing process to bypass the taxation workflow, including skipping third-party API calls, for transactions or invoices containing only zero-value line items.

Why is this important?

This update eliminates unnecessary API calls for zero-dollar transactions, reducing processing overhead and improving efficiency. It also prevents redundant workflows, helping you focus resources where they matter most.

How can you use it?

This feature can be enabled through your Site Settings. Please contact us at Chargebee Support to activate it.

Country dropdown added to dLocal settings

The dLocal configuration page now includes a Merchant Country dropdown, replacing the text box for merchant country codes.

Why is this important?

The dropdown prevents errors from incorrect country code formats, ensuring accurate entries, and reducing setup confusion.

How can you use it?

Select your country directly from the dropdown when configuring dLocal to ensure a correct and hassle-free setup.

Enhanced iDEAL payment integration

The iDEAL payment flow now removes the bank selection dropdown and no longer requires the Issuer ID in the Create payment request. Instead, the API response provides a link to an iDEAL-hosted page where consumers select their bank.

Why is this important?

This update simplifies your setup by reducing inputs and shifting bank selection to iDEAL's hosted page, ensuring compliance with the latest iDEAL requirements for your customers.

How can you use it?

Stop sending the Issuer ID in your API requests. Consumers will handle bank selection on the iDEAL-hosted page provided in the API response.

Introducing unit of measure for all item types

Chargebee now supports the unit of measure functionality for all items - Plans, Addons, or Charges, enabling you to define and manage units like 'user', 'GB', or 'issue' for quantity-based items. This enhancement ensures clarity and consistency across your pricing plans and customer-facing documents, such as hosted pages, invoices, and quotes.

Why is this important?

Using specific units of measure helps your customers understand the exact value they're purchasing. Whether you're offering cloud storage, subscriptions, or physical goods, this feature brings precision to how items are described and billed.

How can you use it?

Navigate to Product Catalog > Plans, Addons, or Charges to configure the unit of measure for your items via the Chargebee UI or API. This functionality is available across all CRUD operations, ensuring full flexibility for your plans, addons, and charges.

New filtering and central search options for entitlements

We have introduced filtering and central search capabilities on the Edit Entitlements pages via Subscriptions. You can now filter the list of features making it easier to locate specific features when managing entitlements.

Why is this important? Managing entitlements becomes increasingly complex as the number of features grows. This new filtering functionality saves time by allowing you to quickly find and adjust limits or thresholds for usage-based features.

How can you use it? Go to the Subscriptions page > Navigate to Entitlements > Edit > Filter List. Enter keywords or select criteria to filter the list of features, you can also filter using the custom fields added to the features. The filtered results will display only the features that match your search, enabling faster adjustments.

Improved accuracy for dashboard update timing

This update improves the dashboard experience for Multi-Business Entity enabled domains by ensuring that data is reflected in real-time, immediately after database updates. Previously, there was a delay of up to 3 hours, but now the dashboard will display the most current data without lag.

Why is this important?

Accurate, up-to-date information on your dashboard empowers you to make confident, data-driven decisions. By providing real-time insights that reflect the latest updates, it ensures your business-critical data is always reliable, enabling faster responses and more effective planning.

How can you use it?

Go to RevenueStory > Dashboard , and you will now see real-time data without delays. This update requires no additional steps from you—your dashboard will automatically reflect the latest data each time you view it.

Remapping Implementation

This update introduces a remapping feature to enhance data accuracy across your integrations. It allows you to adjust mappings between systems, ensuring that data is correctly synced and aligned.

Why is this important?

With this functionality, you can remap records with third-party API IDs.

How can you use it?

To use the remapping feature, access your integration settings, go to Apps > {Integration Name} > View Sync Log > Remap and adjust mappings as needed. This will allow you to realign fields and values, ensuring data flows are accurate and aligned with your latest requirements.

ACH verification simplified with financial connections

To enhance the reliability of ACH payments via Stripe, we have updated the verification process in the Full-page Checkout. The micro-deposit verification (MDV) option, known for frequent failures, has been removed. Instead, ACH payments now rely entirely on Financial Connections, allowing for instant verification.

Why is this important?

This change enhances the reliability of ACH payments, reducing delays and ensuring a more dependable experience for you and your customers. With instant verification, you can minimize failed transactions and improve payment success rates.

How can you use it?

The update is already active in your Full-page checkout. Continue offering ACH as a payment option, and rest assured that verifications are faster and more consistent with Financial Connections.

Fix for subscription cancellation with advanced invoicing

We've addressed an issue where subscription cancellations scheduled with the end_of_billing_term parameter were inaccurately set 14 days earlier than the intended expiration date when an advance invoice schedule was present. This fix ensures that cancellations align correctly with the actual billing term, eliminating unnecessary service disruptions and reducing manual intervention. Now, you can manage subscriptions with confidence, through the API or the Chargebee UI.

Subscription page issue resolved

You can now view complete subscription details across all devices and browsers without interruptions. We have resolved an issue where some subscriptions were partially displayed on the subscriptions page, impacting visibility on both Google Chrome and Safari.

Location validation now includes state code

For Taxamo, we have enhanced location validation by ensuring the state code is now included during validation requests. Previously, the absence of this field could resulted in inaccurate location validation.

Improved handling of E-Invoicing entity identifiers

You can now use the update_billing_info API to update a customers billing address and manage E-Invoicing entity identifiers across countries without errors. Previously, attempts to delete entity identifiers tied to the old billing country and add identifiers for the new country in a single API call resulted in a param_wrong_value error. This limitation has been addressed, allowing you to efficiently handle country-specific entity identifier updates in one request.

Improved accuracy in e-invoice tax calculations

We've resolved an issue where e-invoices could fail due to minor discrepancies in tax calculations. Previously, invoices with tax amounts differing by even a small margin like 0.02 from the expected value could trigger errors like tax amount is correct percentage of taxable amount. This update ensures that tax amounts are calculated more precisely, with an error range of maximum 0.01 adhering to the required decimal accuracy of e-invoicing provider.

Checkout: Accurate tax display for zero decimal currencies

We've resolved an issue where tax values were displaying incorrectly on Checkout for zero decimal currencies in specific cases.

Checkout: Duplicate event tracking issue fixed for Google Analytics

Some of you may have noticed duplicate begin_checkout events being triggered when using Checkout's built-in Google Analytics integration. We've resolved this issue to ensure your analytics data remains accurate and free from redundancy.

Fixed: No more unwanted invoices

We've resolved an issue where an invoice was generated even after selecting "Do not generate" in the UI. Previously, a parameter was incorrectly set, overriding your choice. With this fix, your preferences are now honored, ensuring precise control over invoice generation and eliminating unnecessary steps in your workflow.

Invoice preview issue resolved

We've fixed an issue that caused invoice previews to time out and display an error. The invoice preview link now works as expected. With this fix, you can effortlessly review invoices before sharing them, streamlining your billing process and maintaining a professional experience for your customers.

Tax-exempt reason issue resolved

We've resolved an issue where the tax-exempt reason was missing in manually generated invoices for tax-exempt customers. This fix ensures accurate tax details are reflected, even when handling complex scenarios like account hierarchies or unbilled charges across customers. With this improvement, you can maintain compliance and deliver precise billing information without additional effort.

Checkout: Translation issue resolved

We've fixed an issue where the uploaded language translations were not applied to the final page of Checkout for some users.

Pricing Table: Frequency tabs now reflect only active plans

This fix prevents empty frequency tabs from appearing when there are no active plan prices for the frequency and maintains a cleaner and more focused user experience.

Full-Page Checkout: Fix for incorrect amount displayed after payment

We've fixed an issue in the Create checkout API where the amount would display as zero on the thank you page when passing the unit_price_in_decimal parameter. With this update, your customers will now see the correct pricing details, ensuring clarity and trust in the checkout experience.

Fixed quote URL configuration issue

We've fixed an issue with the quote URL configuration that was causing the Quotes List API to fail. The error occurred due to an incorrect value set for the __url_config__ field in a specific quote. With this fix, the configuration is now correctly updated, allowing you to retrieve quotes seamlessly and improve your workflow. This update ensures accurate data handling and eliminates disruptions, helping you manage your quotes more effectively.

Billing restored for subscriptions with past renewal dates

We've resolved an issue where subscription renewals failed, preventing invoices from being generated for certain subscriptions with past renewal dates. This fix ensures that renewals created through bulk operations are processed as expected, allowing you to generate invoices, record revenue, and collect payments without interruptions.

Fixed tax inclusivity display in subscriptions

We've resolved an issue where subscriptions incorrectly displayed taxes as inclusive, even when the site was set up for exclusive taxes. Additionally, we've updated the messaging to remove references to a non-existent setting, ensuring clarity. The Total Contract Value is now accurately shown as inclusive of tax where applicable, helping you avoid confusion and maintain accurate billing information.

Fixed delay in creating pending invoices

We've resolved an issue where invoices in the pending state were generated 24 hours after the subscription renewal event due to a timezone comparison error. Pending invoices are now created promptly after the renewal event, ensuring timely billing and accurate record-keeping for your subscriptions.

Resolved translation errors in custom invoice templates

We've fixed an issue where line item names were not translating according to the language pack when using a customized invoice template. The i18n (internationalization) settings for charge descriptions in the template builder have been corrected. This ensures your invoices now fully reflect the selected language pack, providing consistent and accurate communication for your global customers.

Improved transaction API for credit note handling

We've fixed an issue where the cn_reference_invoice_id field was missing in the /transaction/? API response, leading to sync failures in RevenueStory. The reference invoice ID was incorrectly treated as mandatory. This has been fixed and the reference ID is now optional for credit notes, ensuring successful data synchronization and accurate reporting in RevenueStory.

Gateway filters now reflect correct invoice data

We've resolved an issue where filtering invoices by date and gateway or gateway account showed inconsistent counts in exports. The export data incorrectly counted unique transactions instead of unique invoices, leading to discrepancies. With this fix, invoice exports now accurately reflect the filtered data, helping you maintain precise records and make better-informed decisions.

Fixed missing VAT details in downloaded invoices

We've fixed an issue where VAT information was missing from invoices downloaded through portal sessions, despite being visible in the Chargebee UI. This was due to a missing localized memo for tax and discount lines in imported invoices. A bulk update has been applied to address this, ensuring that VAT details are correctly displayed on client-accessed invoices, enhancing transparency and compliance with tax regulations.

Filter issue with price points resolved

We have fixed an issue where certain price points in a custom subscription filter were disappearing and showing an 'X' icon. With this fix, your filters will now display all price points correctly, ensuring accurate and reliable filtering for better subscription management.