Can a Business Pay a WooCommerce Subscription by Invoice?
How It Works
An offline payment method (bank transfer, cheque, or a custom "pay by invoice" gateway) can be selected at checkout for a subscription product the same as for any other, but it inherently can't store a reusable payment credential the way a card or wallet token does. This means the subscription automatically falls into manual renewal — the mechanism covered in the manual-vs-automatic renewal question — generating a new order each cycle that the business customer has to pay directly.
Common B2B Requirements This Needs to Cover
- A proper invoice document, often with the business's tax ID, PO number, and formal line-item breakdown — the default WooCommerce order confirmation isn't always sufficient for B2B accounting requirements, and a dedicated PDF invoicing plugin is usually needed alongside this setup.
- A PO number field at checkout, which isn't a default WooCommerce field and needs adding, either through a checkout-fields plugin or custom code, so the business customer's own purchase order reference is captured and appears on the invoice.
- Net payment terms (30/60/90 days) rather than payment due immediately — WooCommerce doesn't have a native concept of deferred payment terms, so this typically needs a dedicated B2B/wholesale plugin or custom logic.
- Reliable reminders for manual renewal, since a B2B customer relying on internal processes to pay an invoice is more likely to miss a renewal than a card getting auto-charged — the renewal-reminder email becomes more operationally important here than for a typical consumer subscription.
Setting It Up Properly
- Add a PO number or reference field to checkout if business customers need to track purchases against their own internal systems.
- Pair the setup with a proper PDF invoicing plugin if formal invoices (not just order confirmation emails) are a hard requirement for your B2B customers.
- Confirm renewal reminder emails are enabled and clear, since manual renewal depends entirely on the customer actively paying each cycle.
- For genuine net payment terms, that's beyond what WooCommerce Subscriptions handles natively and needs a dedicated B2B extension or custom development.
See custom WooCommerce development for a proper B2B invoicing and subscription setup with PO numbers and payment terms.