Understanding Your Invoice

A walk through each line on a node4 PDF invoice (plan charges, add-ons, negative adjustments) and how the totals block adds up.

Where invoices live

Everything is on the Orders page in the dashboard. It shows two lists: your order history, and the itemized invoices generated for completed purchases and renewals. Each invoice carries a sequential number in the form INV-<number> and downloads as a PDF. Use these for expense claims and bookkeeping rather than screenshots of the checkout, since the PDF is the document with your billing details and the full breakdown on it.

Older orders may carry a simpler invoice with a single description line. That is a historical format, not missing data; newer charges get the full line-item layout described below.

The line items

Each line has a description, a quantity, a unit amount and a line total. What can appear:

• Subscription line. The plan name and the charge for one billing period. On a renewal invoice this is usually the only line. If the name here is not the plan you expect to be on, raise it; this line is the record of what you were actually billed for.
• Bandwidth top-up. Each block purchased is its own line. These are one-time charges, so they appear on the invoice for that purchase, never on a renewal. What top-ups are and how they expire is covered in bandwidth top-ups.
• Extra IP slots. A one-time add-on that raises how many addresses your IP whitelist can hold. Worth checking before you buy one: the whitelist authenticates every product, residential included, so a slot is useful whatever you hold. Like top-ups, these show up on their own invoice at purchase time. Background on whitelisting itself is in IP whitelisting best practices.
• Negative lines. A proration adjustment (typically credit for unused time on a plan you moved away from, as described in changing or upgrading your plan) appears as a line with a negative amount, reducing the subtotal rather than being hidden inside it.

The totals block

Under the lines, in order:

• Subtotal: the sum of every line above, including any negative ones.
• Discount: a promo or discount code applied to this invoice, shown as a deduction.
• Account credit: balance already on your account (from a proration, for instance) spent against this invoice before any payment method is touched.
• Tax: if applicable to you; absent otherwise.
• Total: what the invoice comes to after those adjustments.
• Amount paid: what was actually collected.

The number on your card or PayPal statement should match amount paid, not subtotal: an invoice partly covered by credit charges your payment method only the remainder. A crypto-paid invoice reads as paid once the payment settles, so there can be a delay between creating the payment and the invoice reflecting it.

Note that current plan pricing lives on /pricing; an old invoice documents what a period cost then, so a mismatch with today's page is history, not an error.

If something looks wrong

Open a support ticket from the dashboard and quote the invoice number; it identifies the exact charge faster than a date or an amount does. For questions that are really about the subscription behind the invoice (why a renewal happened, what a cancellation will do to the next one), see subscription management. The one-line versions of the questions this article answers at length (what a billing period is, which payment methods are accepted, what happens to an allowance you did not use) are on the FAQ.