Purchaser vs Billable Party

Learn the difference between the Purchaser and the Billable Party when creating transactions (invoices & sales receipts).

Pete Zimek, CAE avatar
Written by Pete Zimek, CAE
Updated over a week ago

Quick Synopsis:

When an event registration or Ecommerce transaction is created, a purchaser is always determined. When that transaction is an invoice, then there will be a purchaser and a billable party. When the transaction is a sales receipt, there will be no billable party.


Sales Receipts: Purchaser Only

For sales receipts, the purchaser and billable party are considered one and the same. Unlike an invoice, there is no one (or no company) to send a bill to since there isn't a bill to send.

Member Checking Out with a Sales Receipt

When a member purchases something on the website, he or she will be identified as the purchaser. The transaction will show that person (not the person's company) on the sales receipt. 

The member will be able to see record of the transaction within their Member Compass™, and admins will see the transaction listed on the Transactions tab of the member's detail page. The sales receipt will also be visible on the parent's Transactions tab, provided the filter is set appropriately. (see example below)

Guest (Or Non-Logged In Member) Checking Out with a Sales Receipt

When a website user is not logged in, that anonymous visitor is considered a guest. For a number of reasons, including data integrity and security, Novi does not create customer records for every guest that checks out on the website. When one of these anonymous website visitors registers for an event or makes an Ecommerce purchase on your website, the corresponding sales receipt will be tied to the "Novi Guest" customer. Don't worry, the information we collect on the credit card holder will be placed onto the sales receipt so that you will have some documentation as to whom made the purchase.

Admin Transaction with Sales Receipt

When manually creating an event registration or Ecommerce purchase for a member, an admin can assign the purchaser role to any record in the database.


Invoices: Purchaser & Billable Party

When it comes to invoices, the person who processes an event registration or Ecommerce transaction does not necessarily have to be the same person (or company) responsible for the invoice. Given that an invoice is essentially a promise to pay, it's important to know not only the purchaser but also the billable party. The billable party is the person or company that is responsible for paying the invoice.

  • If you find an invoice that has the wrong Billable Party, you will need to update the transaction itself inside of QuickBooks Online.

Member Checking Out with an Invoice

When a member registers for an event or checks out from the Ecommerce cart, he or she is automatically considered the purchaser. If the member selects invoice as the payment method, then the member is asked to select a billable party.

The choices available to the member are governed by a series of settings that your organization made during setup, including those settings covered here:

Guests - Not Permitted to Check Out with an Invoice

When a user is not logged in, there is no method for the system to know who that person is. Because of this, we do not allow guests to request an invoice. We want our association partners to be able to collect the money that is owed to them!

Admin Transaction with an Invoice

When an admin creates a transaction resulting in an invoice, he or she is asked to identify both a purchaser and a billable party. Admins are free to choose any records from the database. We suggest that organizations create their own internal business rules to determine what types of records should be listed as purchaser and billable party.

We want you to be able to answer this question: "I received the invoice you sent to ABC company. Who in our company authorized that expenditure?"

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