Before you start selling in Ontraport, it helps to know the four kinds of sales records it keeps: invoices, payments, purchases and open orders. Here's what each one is, where to find it, and what you can do with it.
Invoices and payments replace what we used to call transactions. An invoice is a request for payment. It shows what's owed, and one invoice can hold several products. A payment is money you actually received toward an invoice. A purchase is a record of each product a customer bought. And an open order is a standing order for future charges, from a subscription, a payment plan or a trial.
To see one customer's records, go to Contacts, open the contact, and click the Purchases tab. It's available on Plus and above. You'll find Purchase history, Invoice info, Last credit card used, Invoices, Payments, Subscriptions and payment plans, Credit cards on file, and Coupons, which holds personal coupon codes made for that contact.
Most billing work happens on invoices, and each one has a status. Draft means it's created but not sent. Open means it's unpaid. Collections means a payment failed, and Ontraport keeps retrying the card based on your recharge settings. Closed means the payment was collected or refunded. Voided means it was canceled. And Write off means collection has stopped. Older accounts may also see a Refunded status.
Select an invoice to act on it. The actions you see depend on its status. Request payment emails the customer an unpaid invoice with a View & Pay button. Copy invoice link and Copy pay link let you share it another way, like in a chat.
Pay charges a card on file, or logs a payment you received offline, like a check or cash. If the charge is declined, you choose whether to keep the invoice open, run collections, or void it.
Refund works on closed invoices. Whether the money also goes back through your payment gateway depends on that gateway's rules, so check your gateway the first time you refund. Void cancels an invoice but keeps the record. Write off marks it as bad debt and stops collection. You can also edit drafts and open invoices, delete drafts, resend a receipt, re-run partner commissions after fixing a referrer, and export to CSV. To create an invoice, click New invoice in the Invoices section. The Taking payment section of this course covers that in detail.
Payments are simpler. Each one is either a payment or a refund, and its status is Applied or Declined. Refunds show as negative amounts. On a payment, you can refund it if it was applied, or export it.
Purchase history lists each product a contact bought, with details from the related invoice and payment. Purchases come from order forms, invoices and manual transactions. You can't add or delete them by hand. They're also what your sales automations run on, with triggers like Purchases product and Gets a refund on a product. Click Sales in the top navigation to see every purchase in your account. And if you turn on Advanced Purchases, under profile icon, then Administration, then Advanced Features, purchases become a full object you can add custom fields, automations and relationships to. It's available on some account levels.
Open orders live in the Subscriptions and payment plans section. A subscription repeats with no end date. A payment plan has a set number of payments. And adding a trial to a product creates an open order too. Select one and click Edit to change the products, tax and shipping, the next charge date, billing details, the payment gateway, the receipt template, and whether receipts go out automatically. Or click Delete to remove it and cancel its recurring payments. If it was a membership site subscription, remember to remove the contact's site access too.
To look across all your customers, hover over Sales and click Reports. Transaction Logs list each transaction by contact, with refund, void and commission tools. Product Sales Logs show each sale with its purchase and payment details. Open Orders shows upcoming subscription payments, remaining payment plan installments, and trials about to convert. And Subscription Sales covers your recurring products. The Invoices and Payments collections are under Sales too.
On the Trends Dashboard, on Plus and above, the Sales chart tracks sales and refunds, the Monthly Recurring Revenue chart tracks your subscriptions, and the Payment Plans chart tracks your plans. You can filter each one by product to see which offers are growing.
So: invoices ask for money, payments record what came in, purchases track what was bought, and open orders handle what's coming next. Next up: storing credit card information, and PCI.