I have been using invision for over 10 years. I would like to start by saying that I have generally been a very happy customer over the last 10 years, with many supportive words of the invision software and always recommending people to use this forum software over others. I can not say for sure if in another 10 years time I will still be a customer :(

Invision have dropped several key community features in the past, such as chat & native apps, many new community competitors have filled this gap providing better software. I genuinely have concerns about the direction invision is going, with the latest version looking more like a simply reskin then any real features added. I am one of the very few who has successfully built a business from a community and certain aspects are important. Invision was once IMO the leading forum/community software, but I do not believe this to be the case anymore. I pay invision directly for hosting, and would gladly pay more if all of the key features were there.

Stripe Integration

Invision only allows for Stripe and PayPal as default checkout integrations. Yet the strip API integration is missing many key features, 1. it isn't possible to turn on TAX calculations from Stripe as invision have not included that part (other community software has this) 2. it isn't possible for UK VAT registered businesses to remove the VAT at checkout, only EU is supported and this is through invison, other community software uses the Stripe payment gateway and allows for the VAT to be removed by entering the VAT number. I believe it may be better to enable all the features and let stripe handle the payment pages.

I would like to stick with my forum on invision for the forceable future, but I am not sure for how long the software will remain relevant. The reskin (from some aspects, looks amazing. From other aspects it is over simplified and looks cheap and basic) I do believe a refresh is welcomed, so it is appreciated that something was done. But usable features may have been a better improvement, as version 4 also looks great IMO)

Surely for a VAT registered business selling subscriptions through invison, a fully working Stripe API would be a welcomed improvement? I suspect not many of your customers ask for this, because they either are not doing things legally, or they are registered within UK/EU and not hitting the VAT thresholds so calculating VAT isn't a concern to them. Indeed it was not a cancer for me until 10 years later.

I acknowledge that the large corporate/enterprises customers Invision have, are mainly using the software as forum software and not selling memberships. So there is likely a small % of forums / communities that require a fully working Stripe API. There are alternative community software that does offer this, as well as many other benefits, and invison are loosing market share to these competitors, so I do believe that it would be beneficial to add these features and increase the customer base of invison.

I am not very hopeful that this will be added as I am not sure the team really understand from my side why it is an important feature to easily calculate the amount of VAT needed to pay. (a simple business issues) needles to say I am very disappointed that something I expected to be standard isn't included.

If you do not want to fully integrate stripe, maybe there is an option within invison that can be added to calcite the VAT on all of the invoices?

Forcing users to build their own custom gateway integrations at the cost of several thousands isn't great, this implementation should be done at the invison level IMO. After all you have dropped physical products, so the only way your customers can make a business from their community is by selling subscriptions, but you do not even fully support subscriptions as simply things like VAT calculations within Stripe can not be turned on as the API was not implemented fully (whereas competitors have done this and was one reason why I chose another competitor for another project)

So in conclusion, please can you integrate the stripe API so that Stripe can calculate the tax owed. It is as simple as adding this parameter to the API / products:

Hello. You can use Stripe Checkout with automatic tax calculation!

 

Hello. You can use Stripe Checkout with automatic tax calculation!

Thank the gods! Thank you so much Krill! It is 3rd party developers like you who really help save the community of people using the invision software!

We have spoken a lot on this internally and are likely to integrate Stripe Checkout at some point in the near-ish future.

 

We have spoken a lot on this internally and are likely to integrate Stripe Checkout at some point in the near-ish future.

Thank you for taking the time to discuss this internally.

Do you know if this likely will be produced for version 4 as well as V5, or will it be V5 only?

Its in discussion at present on what would be done with it :)

It'll be v5 only. It's unlikely we'll bring many more major features to v4. We want to focus all our efforts on v5.

 

It'll be v5 only. It's unlikely we'll bring many more major features to v4. We want to focus all our efforts on v5.

Thanks for the reply.

Wouldn't it be relatively easy to also make for V4?

I still think that calculating tax and removing VAT for VAT registered entities should be a core feature. So it is nice to hear you will be adding this but really unfortunate that it sounds like you will not be enabling this for v4 :(

I can see no benefits in upgrading to version 5 and only a lot go headache and cost to enable all of my custom plugins applications.

 

Wouldn't it be relatively easy to also make for V4?

If we did it for v5, then we could back port it to v5 but it would mean rewriting templates, CSS and some JS to adjust for the different frameworks, then it will need beta testing and then maintaining. Committing resources to that would mean taking away from other work elsewhere.

 

If we did it for v5, then we could back port it to v5 but it would mean rewriting templates, CSS and some JS to adjust for the different frameworks, then it will need beta testing and then maintaining. Committing resources to that would mean taking away from other work elsewhere.

🥲