A stripe invoice is one of the fastest ways to send a bill and actually get paid, without building anything or touching a line of code. You create it in the Dashboard, hit send, and Stripe emails your customer a clean, mobile-friendly page where they can pay in a couple of taps. This guide walks through how a stripe invoice works, what to put on it, what it costs, and the one move most businesses miss right after the money lands.
What a Stripe invoice actually is
Think of a stripe invoice as a bill with a pay button built in. Instead of attaching a PDF and hoping someone mails a check, you send a link. Your customer opens it, sees exactly what they owe, and pays with a card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay right there on the spot.
Stripe hosts the page for you, so there is nothing to design or host yourself. It is optimized for phone, tablet, and desktop, and it quietly surfaces the payment methods most likely to work wherever your customer happens to be. A stripe invoice can be a one-off (a single project, a single sale) or part of a recurring setup. For most service and product businesses, the one-off is the workhorse. You finish the job, you send the bill, you get paid.
How to create and send one in the Dashboard
Creating a stripe invoice takes about a minute. In the Dashboard you pick the customer, add line items with descriptions and amounts, set a due date, and send. No code required. If you bill at real volume you can automate the whole flow through Stripe’s API, but almost everyone starts in the Dashboard, and honestly most people never leave it.
Here is the short version of sending one:
- Add or select the customer and their email address.
- Enter line items, quantities, and prices.
- Set the due date, plus any memo or payment terms.
- Drop in your logo and brand color so it looks like you, not a generic form.
- Hit send. Stripe emails the customer a link to pay.
The moment you send, the status flips to open. When the customer pays, it moves to paid and the cash hits your Stripe balance. Clean, traceable, and no wondering whether the check is really in the mail.
What to put on the invoice
The best stripe invoice is clear and, honestly, a little boring. No guessing, no surprises, nothing that makes a client email you to ask what something means. Make sure yours includes:
- Your business name, logo, and contact details.
- A short line item for each thing you did or sold, with the price next to it.
- The total, plus any tax, spelled out.
- A due date and a note on how late payment is handled.
- An invoice number, so both of you can reference it later.
Small touches carry more weight than you would think. A memo that says thanks. A pay link that works on the first tap. Brand colors that match your website. These are the details that make an invoice feel trustworthy, and trust is a big part of what gets you paid on time instead of thirty days late.
Reminders and getting paid on time
Stripe can send automatic email reminders when a stripe invoice is due or past due, and it retries failed card payments at smart times. That quietly recovers a meaningful slice of payments that would otherwise slip through the cracks. Turning it on is basically free money.
Worth knowing the limits, though. Stripe’s reminder is essentially one toggle with one English email template. No SMS, no WhatsApp, no escalation, no per-customer cadence. So for the invoices that really matter, a nudge from outside Stripe (a quick text, a personal note) still helps. But for everyday billing, switching on reminders is a win you should not skip. Set it once and forget it.
What a Stripe invoice costs
There is no monthly fee to use Stripe Invoicing. You pay a small percentage per paid stripe invoice on top of your standard Stripe processing fees. The Starter tier runs roughly 0.4% per paid invoice and Plus around 0.5%, and there is a cap, so a large bill does not cost a small fortune to collect. On a big B2B invoice, that cap can mean paying a couple of dollars instead of a percentage of the entire amount.
For most small businesses the math is simple. If a stripe invoice gets you paid days faster and with far less chasing, the fee pays for itself and then some. The real cost of billing was never the processing percentage. It was the unpaid invoices you gave up on.
Reviews increasingly shape which businesses buyers and search engines trust. For context, see Google’s guidelines on reviews.
The best time to ask for a review is the second the invoice clears
The moment a stripe invoice is paid, two useful things are true at once. You have a happy customer, and you have proof the money actually moved. That is the ideal window to ask how it went. Ask right then and you catch a quiet complaint before it turns into a chargeback, and you turn a satisfied payer into public proof for the next customer.
A review request that fires the instant payment lands does two jobs. It surfaces the unhappy customer privately, so you can fix things before they call the bank to dispute the charge. And it turns the happy majority into 5-star reviews that help close your next deal. Wait a week and that goodwill quietly fades. Timing is everything.
Trophy Jar automates exactly this. Connect Stripe once and every paid invoice can trigger an automatic review request, with up to three smart follow-ups sent only to people who have not replied yet. Payment clears, the ask goes out, and disputes get caught early instead of after the money is gone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need code to send a Stripe invoice?
No. You can create, brand, and send a stripe invoice entirely from the Stripe Dashboard in about a minute. The API exists for high-volume automation, but most businesses never need it.
How much does a Stripe invoice cost?
There is no monthly fee. You pay a small percentage per paid invoice (roughly 0.4% on Starter and 0.5% on Plus) on top of standard Stripe processing, and that percentage is capped so large invoices stay affordable to collect.
Can Stripe remind customers to pay?
Yes. Stripe can send automatic email reminders when an invoice is due or past due and retries failed card payments at smart times. The built-in reminders are basic (one email template, no SMS), so many businesses add their own nudge for high-value invoices.
Related reading
Keep going: see automated review collection, Stripe review automation.
Turn every paid Stripe invoice into a 5-star review
Connect Stripe once and let every paid invoice trigger an automatic review request, with smart follow-ups that catch disputes early and win your next customer. Start for $9/month.