Customer Balance

How to use the customer balance ledger

Every customer in Stripe Billing has a ledger against which you can issue credit and debit adjustments. These adjustments sum up to a balance on the customer which can be applied to future invoices. A customer’s balance could be a credit (meaning you owe them money) or a debit (meaning they owe you money).

Because the customer balance is computed from a ledger—an immutable list of debit and credit transactions—it provides an audit trail of transactions for the customer. These Customer Balance Transactions can contain useful metadata, which object created the balance adjustment (such as a Credit Note), or which object used the balance (such as applying it to an Invoice).

Examples

Customer Balances are used in many ways, some common use cases include:

When the amount due on an invoice is less than the minimum chargeable amount the invoice is marked as paid and the amount owed moved to the customer balance as a debit.
Rather than refunding money back to the customer’s payment method, issue a Credit Note to create a customer balance credit that you can use to reduce the amount due on their next invoice.

Good to know

The customer balance is applied to the amount due on their next invoice.
You cannot choose a specific invoice to apply the balance to.
You cannot choose to not apply the balance.
The customer balance is stored in the Customer’s currency.

Debits and Credits

Negative values are treated as a credit (a reduction in the amount owed by the customer) which can be applied to the customer’s next invoice.

Positive values are treated as a debit (an increase in the amount owed by the customer to you) which can be applied to the customer’s next invoice.

Understanding Transactions

All modifications to the customer balance are recorded as immutable Customer Balance Transactions. Once created, you may only update its description or metadata–you cannot edit other properties or delete a transaction. You can only undo it by creating a corresponding, reversing transaction. For instance, if you credit the customer $10 you would have to debit the customer $10 in a new transaction, each canceling the other one out.

Transaction Types

All Customer Balance Transactions created with the API or in the Dashboard have a type value of adjustment, representing a debit or credit manually created by you for the customer.

However, for auditing purposes, the type property has many more possible values to represent the creation source and reason for the transaction. The following table outlines and describes each of these type values.

Type	Description
`adjustment`	Manually created adjustment transaction, either debit or credit. The only type of transaction that can be created via API integrations & the Dashboard.
`applied_to_invoice`	Traces the use of the customer balance against a linked Invoice.
`credit_note`	Traces the creation of a credit adjustment to a Credit Note (and it’s associated Invoice).
`invoice_too_small`	When the amount due on an invoice is less than the minimum chargeable amount (the processing fee) the invoice is debited to the customer balance and will be added to the amount due of the next issued invoice.
`invoice_too_large`	When the amount due on an invoice is too large the amount due is added to the Customer Balance.
`unspent_receiver_credit`	When unspent funds in receiver sources are not fully charged after 60 days, Stripe automatically charges them on your behalf and credits your balance. When this happens, Stripe also creates a corresponding credit transaction to the customer’s balance labeled as “Funds sent by customer” on the customer detail page in the Dashboard.
`initial`	Represents the starting value of the customer balance ledger where a customer is created via the API with a non-zero balance.

Modifying the Customer Balance

You can modify a customer’s balance through the Dashboard by creating a new Customer Balance Transaction adjustment from the Customer’s detail page.

Scroll down to find the Customer balance panel, and click the Add balance adjustment button to display the Customer balance adjustment modal.

From here you can set information about the adjustment, such as the Adjustment type (credit or debit), as well as a Currency (only available if the customer does not yet have a currency set), Amount, and an internal note (visible to Dashboard users, but not the customer).

Adding a new Customer Balance Transaction adjustment

API

Create adjustments via the Customer Balance API, as shown in the following code example.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/customers/cus_4fdAW5ftNQow1a/balance_transactions \
  -u sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc: \
  -d amount=-500 \
  -d currency=usd

# Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
# See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
Stripe.api_key = 'sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc'

Stripe::Customer.create_balance_transaction(
  'cus_4fdAW5ftNQow1a',
  {
    amount: -500,
    currency: 'usd',
  }
)

# Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
# See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
stripe.api_key = 'sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc'

stripe.Customer.create_balance_transaction(
  'cus_4fdAW5ftNQow1a',
  amount=-500,
  currency='usd',
)

// Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
// See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
\Stripe\Stripe::setApiKey('sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc');

\Stripe\Customer::createBalanceTransaction(
  'cus_4fdAW5ftNQow1a',
  [
    'amount' => -500,
    'currency' => 'usd',
  ]
);

// Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
// See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
Stripe.apiKey = "sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc";

Customer customer = Customer.retrieve("cus_4fdAW5ftNQow1a");
Map<String, Object> params = new HashMap<String, Object>();
params.put("amount", -500);
params.put("currency", "usd");
customer.balanceTransactions().create(params);

// Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
// See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
const stripe = require('stripe')('sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc');

(async () => {
  const txn = await stripe.customers.createBalanceTransaction(
    'cus_4fdAW5ftNQow1a',
    {
      amount: -500,
      currency: 'usd',
    }
  );
})();

// Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
// See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
stripe.Key = "sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc"

params := &stripe.CustomerBalanceTransactionParams{
  Amount: stripe.Int64(-500),
  Currency: stripe.String(string(stripe.CurrencyUSD)),
  Customer: stripe.String("cus_4fdAW5ftNQow1a"),
}
txn, err := customerbalancetransaction.New(params)

// Set your secret key: remember to change this to your live secret key in production
// See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/account/apikeys
StripeConfiguration.ApiKey = "sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc";

var options = new CustomerBalanceTransactionCreateOptions {
    Amount = -500,
    Currency = "usd",
};
var service = new CustomerBalanceTransactionService();
var transaction = service.Create(options);