Skip to main content
Customers represent the entities, usually users or organizations, of your application that can use and pay for your products. For each customer, Autumn will:
  • Keep record of the products they’ve purchased
  • Track the features they’ve used
  • Track the features they have access to
  • Bill them through Stripe for the prices you’ve set

​
Creating a customer via API

You can create a customer with the customers.getOrCreate method. This will create the customer if they don’t exist, or return the existing customer if they do. 
import { Autumn } from "autumn-js";

const autumn = new Autumn({ secretKey: "am_sk_test_1234" });

const customer = await autumn.customers.getOrCreate({
  customerId: "user_123",
  name: "John Doe",
  email: "john@example.com",
});
Only the customerId field is required - this should be your unique identifier for the customer that you’ll use to reference them in future API calls.
An Autumn customer does not map to a Stripe customer by default. A Stripe customer will only be created when an attach request is made.

​
Creating a customer via the Autumn dashboard

You can also create a customer via the Autumn dashboard. This is useful if you want to “pre-create” a customer for a user who hasn’t interacted with your application yet.
  1. Navigate to the Customers page
  2. Click the “Create Customer” button
  3. Fill in the customer’s details, such as name and email.
    Leave the id field blank, as this will come from your application.
  4. Click “Create Customer”
When the customer logs in for the first time, Autumn will match the user’s email to the customer email you provided above.
Make sure the email you provide is the same email that the customer will use to log in to your application. You can update this from the customer details page.
You can enable a product and set their properties in advance, so that when they do interact with your application, they’re already have the right features available. This is especially useful for larger or enterprise deals where payment happens separately via invoice.

​
Customer Properties

​
Customer ID

This is your unique identifier for the customer. You’ll use this ID in all future API calls to reference this customer. It could be:
  • Your database ID for the user
  • Their email address
  • Any other unique identifier in your system

​
Name and Email

Optional fields to help identify the customer in the Autumn dashboard and on invoices.

​
Stripe Integration

By default, Autumn does not create a Stripe customer when you create an Autumn customer. A Stripe customer is only created on the first billing call (like billing.attach or billing.openCustomerPortal). You can change this behavior with the following options:

​
Create in Stripe immediately

Pass createInStripe: true to create the Stripe customer at the same time as the Autumn customer: 
await autumn.customers.getOrCreate({
  customerId: "user_123",
  name: "John Doe",
  email: "john@example.com",
  createInStripe: true,
});
If you already have a Stripe customer, pass stripeId to link it to the Autumn customer: 
await autumn.customers.getOrCreate({
  customerId: "user_123",
  stripeId: "cus_abc123", // Your existing Stripe customer ID
});