Customize invoices

You can customize ​​the content and language of an invoice to meet the needs of your business:

• Custom fields
• Memo field
• Footer field
• Invoice numbering schemes
• Customer preferred language

Custom fields

Add custom fields to enhance your invoice PDF documents and help you comply with your business practice and tax reporting obligations. Custom fields allow you to provide up to four key-value pairs, ​​that display on the invoice header.

Custom fields render at the top right of your invoice and receipt PDFs.

Common example uses for custom fields are:

• Purchase Order (PO) numbers
• Contractor numbers
• Tax compliance

You can set up to four custom field key-value pairs in the Invoice editor or with the Invoice API.

Custom field inheritance

You can also set custom invoice fields on the Customer object.

Any custom fields set at the customer level apply to all draft invoices generated for that customer. You can modify these inherited custom fields while the invoice is still a draft.

You can’t update the custom fields after an invoice has been finalized.

Memo field

The memo is included in invoice PDFs, invoice emails, and the Hosted Invoice Page.

Memos are commonly used as a notes section, thanking the invoiced customer for their business, or giving more context around the invoice such as a note from the salesperson who talked to the customer.

You can set a default memo field for your account on the Invoicing Settings page. ​​Any new invoices will use this value.

You can then adjust the memo on a per-invoice basis in the dashboard or via the API when creating or updating a draft invoice.

Footer field

​​Invoice PDFs can include an optional footer text block, often used for contractual or legally required text.

A common use case is displaying legally required company registration information, such as a UK Companies House registration number.

Similar to memo settings, you can set the footer’s default value on the Invoicing Settings page. ​​Any new invoices will use this value.

You can then adjust the footer on a per-invoice basis through the dashboard or API.

You ​​can’t update the footer fields after an invoice has been finalized.

Invoice numbering schemes

Stripe automatically generates invoice numbers to help track and reconcile invoices. Invoice numbers have a prefix and suffix, such as 586A2E-0139 or MYSHOP-1203.

​​Stripe supports two invoice numbering schemes:

• ​​Account-level—Uses the same prefix for every customer and assigns invoice numbers sequentially across your entire account.
• ​​Customer-level—Uses a unique prefix for each customer and assigns invoice numbers sequentially for a given customer.

​​The full invoice number is always unique across your account in both schemes.

Stripe chooses a default behavior based on the country your Stripe account is based in. European Union member countries and the United Kingdom, typically require account level sequencing. All other countries default to customer level sequencing because it doesn’t expose the total number of invoices.

When switching between schemes or updating prefixes, only future invoices use the new settings. This doesn’t impact existing invoices.

Using customer level prefixes

When configured to use customer-level numbering, each invoice number begins with the customer’s unique invoice prefix.

For example, if one of your customers is a business named Typographic, you might set the prefix to TYPGRA. The first invoice number for Typographic would be TYPGRA-0001, the second would be TYPGRA-0002 and so on.

​​You can override prefixes to make it easier to trace invoices back to your customers. You can set prefixes on the Customer Detail page in the Stripe Dashboard or with the API using the invoice_prefix parameter. Prefixes have to be between 3 and 12 characters and they can’t match any other customer prefix, including prefixes that are no longer in use.

Using account level prefixes

When configured to use account-level numbering, each invoice number starts with a common prefix and has a sequential number.

For example, if your business is named Rocket Rides, you might set the prefix to RKTRIDE. Your first invoice would be RKTRIDE-0001, a second invoice to a different customer would be RKTRIDE-0002, another invoice to the first customer would be RKTRIDE-0003, and so on.

The account-wide prefix is automatically assigned but you can override it to make it clearer that these invoices come from you. If you want to modify the prefix for your account, you can change it in the Stripe Dashboard. This requires that your account’s default API version is at least 2020-03-02. Prefixes have to be between 3 and 12 characters and they can’t match any customer prefix, including prefixes that are no longer in use.

Setting the next invoice number

By default, invoice numbers start at 0001. But you can use a different starting number if you need to. For example, if you’re migrating existing customers to Stripe Invoicing, you might want to continue invoice numbers where your old system left off (so if you left off at invoice number 123 in that system, you can resume at invoice number 124 in Stripe).

​​Set the number on the Customer Detail page or with the API using the next_invoice_sequence parameter. If you’re using account level prefixes, set the next invoice number in the Next invoice sequence field in the Stripe Dashboard on the invoice template page.

You can only set the next invoice number to numbers greater than any numbers used on an invoice. The maximum allowed invoice number is 1,000,000,000 regardless of how you set it. Use the lowest value possible so that you don’t reach this limit.

Customer preferred language (localization)

Use the Language property on a Customer to set the preferred language. This language is used to localize Invoice emails and PDFs, Receipt emails and PDFs, as well as Credit Note PDFs.

The Update customer invoice details modal showing the Language field.

You can also update the language through the API’s preferred_locales field.

Public support information

Invoices include any public information that you’ve specified in your account details, such as your phone number or website address. Here you’ll also be able exclude your support phone number on invoices. This setting also determines whether or not your support phone number appears on other customer facing documents like the payment receipt and refund receipt.

Customizing Branding

Stripe allows customization of customer-facing emails and UIs on the Branding Settings page.

The following brand settings are available:

• Icon—a square, digital-friendly icon or logo.
• Logo—a non-square logo to override some uses of the icon.
• Accent color—used as a background on emails and pages.

Customize your branding on the Branding Settings Dashboard page.

Icons and logos must be in JPG or PNG format, less than 512kb in size, and equal to or greater than 128px by 128px.

Where brand settings are applied

Because brand settings apply to your whole account, they take effect in many places:

While the generated PDF invoices contain no branded elements, you can customize them extensively with custom fields, footers, and other content.