Plex and Stripe integration

What moves between them

Customer and invoice data flows from Plex into Stripe on a polling schedule tied to your billing cycle. Plex invoices, customer records, and invoice line items are synced to Stripe as Invoice objects with proper customer linkage and line-item detail. Payment notifications from Stripe webhook events are logged to audit but do not flow back to Plex, since Plex is the source of truth for AR and Stripe is the payment processor. Reference data such as customer GL accounts are mapped to Stripe metadata for reporting.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector obtains an OAuth token from Plex's token endpoint and polls the REST API for new and modified invoices and customers on a configurable interval. For each Plex invoice, it looks up or creates a Stripe customer matching the Plex customer record, then creates or updates a Stripe Invoice with the line items from Plex. Stripe API key credentials are stored encrypted, and webhooks are optionally listened for to detect payments and refunds, but the canonical state is always fetched fresh from Stripe before downstream use since webhook delivery can lag or arrive out of order. Rate limits are handled with exponential backoff. Every Plex record synced carries a full audit trail showing source, destination, timestamp, and any mapping applied.

A real-world example

A mid-sized discrete manufacturer in automotive supplies uses Plex for production, inventory, and finance, and Stripe for online invoicing and customer-initiated payments. Before integration, the finance team issued invoices in Plex and manually created matching invoices in Stripe for payment collection, then reconciled payments between systems weekly. With Plex and Stripe connected, each invoice created in Plex automatically flows to Stripe with the correct customer, the Stripe invoice link is stored in the Plex invoice record, and payments arriving in Stripe are logged and reconciled without re-keying. Month-end close is faster because no manual invoice synchronization is needed.

What you can do

• •Sync Plex customer records to Stripe and create or update Stripe customers with matching names and billing metadata.
• •Sync Plex invoices to Stripe as Stripe Invoice objects with all line items, taxes, and amounts mapped correctly.
• •Map Plex GL accounts to Stripe invoice metadata for cost allocation and financial reporting.
• •Authenticate to Plex via OAuth 2.0 and to Stripe via API key, storing all credentials encrypted.
• •Poll Plex on a configurable schedule, with retries and a full audit trail on every invoice synced.

Questions

Which direction does data move between Plex and Stripe?

The main flow is Plex into Stripe. Customer and invoice records move from Plex into Stripe for billing and payment collection. Payment notifications from Stripe are logged but do not flow back to Plex, since Plex remains the source of truth for AR data. Reference data such as GL accounts are mapped to Stripe metadata for reporting.

Why does ml-connector poll Plex instead of waiting for webhooks?

Plex does not offer native webhooks, so ml-connector polls the REST API on a configurable interval, filtering by modified_date to find new and changed invoices and customers. Polling allows reliable, deterministic syncs on a schedule tied to your billing calendar.

How does the integration handle the differences between Plex invoices and Stripe invoices?

ml-connector maps Plex Invoice entities to Stripe Invoice objects, translating line items, quantities, unit prices, and taxes from Plex data model to Stripe. Plex GL accounts are stored in Stripe invoice metadata for cost-center tracking, and the Plex invoice ID is stored as an idempotency reference to prevent duplicates if the sync replays.