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The Billing > Invoices section in Meteroid provides a central view of all invoices issued to your Customers. Each invoice includes a summary of the billed items, the total amount, payment status, and key metadata such as the invoicing entity, Customer’s details, and due date.

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Create new Invoices

While most invoices in Meteroid are generated automatically based on the conditions defined in your Plans (subscription pricing, usage, one-time charges, etc.), you also have the flexibility to handle ad-hoc or non-recurring events. To manually create an invoice (e.g., for one-off services not covered by a Plan), click “New Invoice” in the Billing > Invoices section. 📌 Note:
  • Newly created invoices are first generated in Draft status and can be freely edited or deleted. They remain in Draft until you click “Finalize & Send”. Once finalized, the invoice is no longer editable as it becomes an accounting document and is automatically sent to the End User.
  • The invoice will always use the Invoicing Entity defined at the Customer level, ensuring correct legal and billing details appear on the document.

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Edit Invoices

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Edit standard invoices elements

To edit standard invoice elements like footnotes or legal mentions (such as VAT number, company details, or custom messaging), go to Settings > Invoices and update these elements for the relevant invoicing entity. To change the logo displayed on invoices, go to Settings > Branding (see Branding). How Invoice elements are determined:
  • Invoice date: Set when the invoice is finalized and sent. It’s based on the subscription’s billing cycle and any applicable grace period.
  • Due date: Automatically calculated using the invoice date plus the configured net payment terms.
  • Bill to: Pulled directly from the Customer’s details (Name and Billing Address).
📌 Note: Meteroid supports localized invoice generation in eight languages, resolved per document. See Invoice language below.

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Edit generated invoices

Invoices with Draft status can be edited in Meteroid. 📌 Note: Generated invoices are not editable once finalized, in compliance with accounting and legal requirements. If a correction is needed, consider issuing a credit note and generating a new invoice with the updated details. To edit a draft invoice:
  1. Go to Billing > Invoices
  2. Click the invoice you want to modify
  3. Open Actions > Edit Invoice
You can perform the following changes:
  • Add, remove, or update line items
  • Update Customer details
    • Refresh from Customer record: Pulls the latest information from the Customer section (useful if the Customer has been recently updated).
    • Edit directly on the invoice: Updates the invoice only without modifying the Customer record afterwards.
  • Add a discount
  • Add, update, or remove metadata, such as Purchase Order Number, Due date…
📌 Note: Sublines generated by Meteroid (e.g., tier breakdown, group usage details) are not editable.

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Manage Invoices

Invoices in Meteroid are handled at the Subscription level, meaning a Customer receives a separate invoice for each Subscription. 💡 Note: By enabling the “Consolidate recurring invoices” in Settings > Invoices, Meteroid can consolidate invoices from different Subscritpions into a single Invoice, providing the Subscriptions share the same billing properties. More info in the documentation’s Settings > Invoices section. To manage invoices, navigate to Billing > Invoices. There, you can view and track all invoices with the following key details:
  • Invoice Number – Unique identifier for each invoice
  • Customer – The recipient of the invoice
  • Amount & Currency – Total due in the relevant currency
  • Invoice Date – Date the invoice was issued
  • Status – Current state of the invoice (see below)
  • Payment Status – Whether or not the invoice has been paid (see below)

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Invoice Status

  • Draft: Set automatically between the end of the billing period and the end of the grace period. The invoice is not yet finalized and is not sent to the Customer.
  • Finalized: Unless specified, this status is set automatically at the end of the grace period. Finalized invoices are accounting documents and can no longer be edited. At this stage, if the preferred payment method is:
    • Direct Debit or Credit Card: If automatic payment is configured, Meteroid will charge the Customer directly and send an invoice afterwards. Otherwise, Meteroid sends a secure payment link along with the invoice, allowing the Customer to complete the payment manually.
    • Bank Transfer: The Customer receives the invoice along with your bank details to initiate the transfer manually.
  • Voided: Equivalent to canceling an invoice, while preserving an audit trail. Can only be applied to finalized invoices. This action is manual.
  • **Uncollectible: **Used when an invoice is considered definitively unpaid (e.g., in case of customer bankruptcy). This is a final and irreversible status, set manually.

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Payment Status

In addition to invoice status, Meteroid tracks Payment Status:
  • Unpaid: The invoice is due and has not been paid yet.
  • Paid: Set automatically once full payment is received. Applies to payments made via credit card or direct debit.
  • Partially Paid: Set if only part of the total amount has been paid.
  • Errored: Triggered after multiple failed payment attempts (e.g., declined card, insufficient funds). Typically applies to automatic payments via credit card or direct debit after all retries have failed.
💡 Note: Meteroid automatically updates the payment status if the payment method is Direct Debit or Credit Card. If the payment method is set at bank transfer, payment status for a given invoice can be updated by clicking on Actions > Mark as Paid.

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Previewing Upcoming Invoices

Meteroid allows you to preview the estimated amount for the next billing cycle before the invoice is created. This is particularly useful for monitoring high-volume usage-based accounts. To view an upcoming invoice:
  • Navigate to the Subscriptions section.
  • Click on a specific Subscription.
  • Scroll down to the Upcoming Invoice section.
The preview provides a real-time calculation based on all data processed by Meteroid to date, whether it is flat rates or usage-based events.
Upcoming Invoices Visualization in Meteroid

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When are End Users Invoiced?

To invoice End Users in Meteroid, their Subscriptions must first be activated (cf. Billing > Subscriptions). Once active, invoicing depends on two factors:
  • The billing cycle defined at the subscription level — either on the 1st of the month or on the anniversary date (i.e., the date the subscription started).
  • The billing period defined for each pricing component within a Plan — monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.
Different types of pricing components are billed at different moments within the billing period:
  • Subscription rates and slot-based pricing are billed at the beginning of the billing period.
  • Capacity commitments and usage-based charges are billed at the end of the billing period, once actual usage or fulfillment is known.
Examples:
  • If a Plan is solely composed of a subscription rate billed quarterly, and the billing cycle is set to the 1st of the month, Customers will receive an Invoice at the beginning of each quarter (e.g., January 1st, April 1st, etc.).
  • In Month M, an Invoice will charge End Users for their monthly subscription rate for Month M+1 (in advance) and their usage or capacity consumption from Month M (in arrears).
Moreover, when an invoice is finalized, Meteroid automatically sends an email to the End users provided the following conditions are met:
  • **“Disable all email notifications” is disabled in **Settings > General, AND
  • An Invoicing Email is configured at the Customer level.
If both conditions are met, Meteroid sends one of the following emails:
  • Receipt Email: Sent when an automatic payment method (e.g., credit card, direct debit) is configured and the payment succeeds. This email includes attached the payment receipt.
  • Invoice Email: Sent when no automatic payment method is available or when payment fails. This email contains the invoice as an attachment and includes a “View and Pay” button redirecting the End User to the checkout page where they can pay their invoice.

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Invoice Language

Meteroid can issue invoices, credit notes and their footers in 8 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil are handled as two separate variants). 📌 Note: If you want to bill in a language that is not yet supported, please contact us at 👉 hey@meteroid.com The language of a given document is resolved in this order, first match wins:
  1. Customer preference — Customers > Invoice language on the Customer record. Leave it on Default (inherit) to fall through.
  2. Invoicing entity default — Settings > Invoices > Default invoice language.
  3. The invoicing entity’s country — the locale of the incorporation country set when the invoicing entity was created.
  4. English — the final fallback.
Regional variants collapse onto the language they belong to: fr-BE and fr-CH both render from the French bundle, de-AT and de-CH from the German one. Portuguese is the exception, shipped as two distinct bundles — pt-BR for Brazil, pt-PT for everywhere else — because the two diverge on the vocabulary a document is made of. Invoice footers (Settings > Invoices > Invoice footer) can be written separately for each supported language, so the correct legal mentions appear regardless of which language a given document renders in. 📌 Note: A document never fails to render over a language tag — an unrecognised one falls back to English. Meteroid rejects unsupported language tags when you save them, so the mistake surfaces while you’re still there to fix it, rather than silently at render time.

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When the issuer’s law decides the language

For a Belgian invoicing entity the order above is inverted: the entity’s own setting outranks the customer’s preference. A Belgian invoice is a document prescribed by law, which brings it under the language legislation — Dutch in Flanders, French in Wallonia — and a document in the wrong language can be void. Setting a Walloon customer to French on a Flemish seller’s account is exactly the well-meant change that would otherwise produce a void invoice, so Meteroid does not let the customer preference win there. Meteroid warns in Settings > Invoices when a Belgian entity has no explicit language set, and prompts for an explicit choice when you create a Belgian or Swiss entity. Switzerland is a prompt only, not a precedence rule — Swiss law imposes no language requirement on an invoice, but with four official languages no single default serves them.

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E-Invoices

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What is e-invoicing?

E-invoicing (electronic invoicing) is the digital exchange of invoice documents between a supplier and a buyer, using a standardized format that enables automated processing. Unlike traditional PDFs or paper invoices, e-invoices follow a structured format (typically XML) that can be seamlessly interpreted by accounting systems and tax authorities. This process is particularly important in jurisdictions like the European Union, where specific e-invoicing standards are mandated for businesses to comply with tax and reporting obligations.

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E-invoices in Meteroid

Meteroid’s invoices and credit notes are modeled on EN 16931, the European semantic standard for electronic invoices, and are issued as Factur-X / ZUGFeRD — a CII-format XML file embedded directly inside the invoice PDF. Your Customer receives a single file that is both human-readable and machine-readable, and their accounting system can import it without re-keying anything. Factur-X / ZUGFeRD is the Franco-German hybrid standard, and one of the formats accepted under the French e-invoicing reform. Enable it per invoicing entity under Settings > Invoices > Structured e-invoicing. 📌 Note: Need another EN 16931 format — XRechnung for German public-sector buyers, or Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 to send over the Peppol network? Tell us at 👉 hey@meteroid.com. We’re expanding format coverage based on what customers actually need to send.

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The compliance report

Every invoice and credit note issued by an entity with structured e-invoicing enabled is checked against the format’s requirements. The result is shown in the E-invoicing section of the document’s side panel in Billing > Invoices. On a draft, the check is a dry run against the live Customer and invoicing entity records. The status reads either:
  • Ready to issue, naming the profile — nothing is missing.
  • Would not be issued — with the number of issues, and the list a click away.
On a finalized document, the same section reports what actually happened: Issued, again naming the profile, or Not issued with the reasons. When the e-invoice was issued you can download the XML file, and for a hybrid format the Hybrid PDF that carries the XML inside it.

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Generating an e-invoice never blocks billing

An invoice that cannot be expressed as a structured document is still a legally issued invoice: it is numbered, it is owed, and it is sent. Meteroid will not refuse to issue an invoice because a VAT number is missing — that would take down billing over metadata. The PDF goes out either way, and the findings are recorded against the document instead.

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Reading the findings

Findings are reported in the standard’s own vocabulary, so they name the exact field to fill rather than saying “not compliant”:
  • The business term path (BG-8/BT-55) is where in the document the field belongs.
  • The message is the rule’s own wording, verbatim, so you can look it up in CEN’s or KoSIT’s index.
  • Some findings carry a short hint where the rule text alone isn’t actionable.

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Fix findings before finalization

This matters more than it looks. A draft still reads the live Customer and invoicing entity records, so filling in a missing field and refreshing the draft fixes that invoice. A finalized invoice is immutable — French law is explicit about it — and the seller and customer identity are frozen onto the document at finalization. Correcting your entity’s registration number today does not make yesterday’s invoice compliant, because yesterday’s invoice no longer reads from the entity. After finalization, the findings only tell you what to fix for the next document. 📌 Note: The draft check re-runs every time you open the invoice, so the verdict always reflects what you just filled in on the Customer or entity.

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Tax mentions on invoices

When a document carries no tax — reverse charge, an exemption, or a cross-border export — the corresponding statutory mention is generated automatically, with the legal reference matching your jurisdiction and the wording in the document’s language. There is nothing to configure. See Legal tax mentions on documents for what is generated and when.