A customer is the counterparty of the invoice issued by the platform. Hence, In B2B (business-to-business) scenarios, a customer is an organization. And in B2C (business-to-consumer) scenarios, a customer is an individual. It is important to identify the customer type as it may have different tax and legal requirements.
The type of customer determines the fields that are required to fill for data belonging to the customer and necessary for billing. Customers can also be linked in a parent-child relationship, allowing for a customer with type organization to have multiple child customers that are individuals or organizations themselves.
It is possible to link multiple customers to each other by defining a parent and child customers. This functionality is already available in the API and will be added to the Desk screens soon.
The timezone of a customer also plays a role in determining how the platform should treat the cut-off moment for generating invoices. This is especially important for usage-based pricing, as billable events may be ingested continuously. A common practice is to set the time zone based on the timezone of the billing entity you are selling from. If a timezone is not set on the customer level, the platform’s time zone will be used.
Keep in mind that it is important to specify the correct timezone for each customer to ensure accurate billing. Once a customer is created, the timezone can not be updated anymore!
Depending on the location (country) of a customer organization, different data may be required for invoicing purposes. For example, EU platforms sending invoices to EU customers may need to capture and include a VAT number, while AU platforms sending invoices to Australian customers may need to include a registration number. It is important to consult with a tax advisor to understand the specific requirements for each country in which you operate. This will help ensure that you comply with local tax laws and regulations when invoicing customers.
