Is it a good alternative of nested if-statement in PHP?

For this use case, creating one record depends on successful creating another record in another database table as following.

$user = $this->createUser();

if ($user) {
    // I skip how $user is being used here.
    $order = $this->createOrder();

    if ($order) {
        // I skip how $order is being used here.
        $invoice = $this->createInvoice();

        if ($invoice) {
            // I skip how $invoice is being used here.
            $payment = $this->createPayment();

            if ($payment) {
                // I skip how $payment is being used here.
                $shipping = $this->createShipping();

                if ($shipping) {
                    $this->notifyCustomer();
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

I do understand that writing many nested if-statements is not a good practice. Is the following code snippet a better alternative?

$user = $this->createUser();
$order = null;

if ($user) {
    // I skip how $user is being used here.
    $order = $this->createOrder();
}

$invoice = null;

if ($order) {
    // I skip how $order is being used here.
    $invoice = $this->createInvoice();    
}

$payment = null;

if ($invoice) {
    // I skip how $invoice is being used here.
    $payment = $this->createPayment();
}

$shipping = null;

if ($payment) {
    // I skip how $payment is being used here.
    $shipping = $this->createShipping();
}

if ($shipping) {
    $this->notifyCustomer();
}

Why I doubt about this solution is because several variables are declared for just to escape the nested if-statements.