Nonpayment

What Happens While an Invoice Stays Unpaid

With Live Billing on, Invoices takes care of an unpaid invoice for you, one step at a time, and sends your client one friendly email at each step. Every step, its day, and the link to your Terms of Service are yours to choose on Invoices' Settings page, under Nonpayment (action invoices.nonpayment.get to see them, invoices.nonpayment.save to change them). The steps at first, counted in days from the due date:

• Due soon, 3 days before: a reminder that the invoice is due. A client whose bank account is charged automatically is told which account will be charged and on what day, and that there is nothing to do. Choose 0 days to turn it off.
• Due today: a reminder on the due date. Both reminders before the due date go only for an invoice issued before them, so a client never gets one the same day as the invoice itself.
• Reminders after the due date, 3, 7, 14, 21, and 35 days after: a friendly reminder with the open balance and the late charges added so far.
• Pause Services, day 14 (off at first): the day before, a friendly note that paying today keeps everything running, and that some services pause tomorrow if the invoice is still open, as your Terms of Service describe. On the day, a note that some services are paused for now and that paying the balance starts everything again on its own.
• Services running again: when the invoice and its late charges are paid after a pause, the client hears at once that services have started again. It goes the moment the payment is received, at any hour, because it confirms what the client just did (Email and Business Hours).
• Remove Website Hosting, day 30 (off at first): reminders on days 21 and 28 with the date to pay by to keep the website online. On the day, a note that website hosting has ended, as your Terms of Service describe. Each says a copy of the website is kept and is available once the balance is paid.
• Last reminder, day 49: a friendly, generic reminder that the invoice is still open.
• The collections day (day 60): the invoice is marked for collections on Run Billing, for your team only. No email or client screen ever mentions collections.

How the Emails Read

Every nonpayment email is friendly and encouraging, aimed at getting the invoice paid, never alarming. Each leads with the easy way to pay, a Pay Now button right after the first paragraph, and offers help: if anything about the invoice does not look right, the client can reply or contact you. The emails stay generic and point to your Terms of Service for what happens and when, as a link with UTM tags (set it in the Nonpayment settings; without one, the emails name your Terms of Service without a link). No email offers a website backup before the balance is paid.

Final Backups Are Released Once Paid

For a client whose website hosting ended for nonpayment, the files kept for it, such as a website's final backup, stay locked in its Account History until every open invoice, late fees included, is paid. Until then each shows "Available once the open balance is paid" instead of Download. Once the balance is paid, the download is there again, with nothing for anyone to do.

Each Step Once, and Never Too Soon

• Each step happens once per invoice, however often the daily run happens, and one step per invoice per day. When two steps fall on the same day, the weightier one goes (removal, pause, a removal warning, the pause notice, the last reminder, a reminder) and stands in for the reminder.
• A reminder more than 3 days late is passed instead of sent, such as for an old invoice when you first turn Nonpayment on. The pause and the removal are never skipped this way: they always follow their notices with the same gap as their days, so services pause at least a day after the notice that they will, and a website is removed at least 9 days after its first warning (with the starting days).
• The steps run in the daily billing run at 5 AM Pacific, and their emails go out during your business hours (Email and Business Hours), except the notice that services are running again, which goes at once.

When Nothing Is Sent

No step goes for:

• An invoice whose bank payment is clearing. A payment that comes back lets the steps go on from where they were.
• An invoice marked Disputed, or one that is paid, voided, or written off (Uncollectible). Late charges themselves get no steps; they are paid with their invoice.
• A client with Hold Collections on, such as a client on a payment plan.
• A client whose account is canceled (Cancel Account), whose final invoice the cancellation handles, or a Former client.
• A test account, or a client not billed here (Billing Active).

Services paused for an invoice start again quietly when that invoice is put on hold, marked disputed, voided, or written off. A bank payment that is clearing keeps services paused until it clears.

Who Is Emailed

Every nonpayment email goes to the client's contacts marked Billing contact. A client with none goes to its authorized contacts (those with Portal access). Never to a Former contact, an address or company on Do Not Contact, or an address that is not one. A step with nobody to email still takes effect, and the invoice's page and the daily notice say so.

Each email is in your own Email Template, comes from the From address in Billing Settings, says why it was sent, and has a Pay Now button to the invoice's own private page, where the client pays by bank account or card (Payments With Stripe). Every link carries UTM tags.

On the Invoice's Page

Each invoice's page has a Nonpayment card (action invoices.nonpayment.invoice):

• Each step that happened, its day, and who it was emailed to, and why any step was passed or skipped.
• The next step and its day, with Skip (action invoices.nonpayment.skip): only the next step can be skipped, with an optional reason. Skipping the pause or the removal means that invoice never pauses services or removes the website.
• Mark Disputed and No Longer Disputed (action invoices.nonpayment.dispute), with what the client disputes.
• Hold Collections and End Hold for the client (action invoices.nonpayment.hold), with the reason, such as the payment plan agreed. A hold stops every step for every invoice of the client until it ends.

Every skip, dispute, and hold is in the Activity Log with who did it and why, and on the client's timeline in CRM.

On the Client's Timeline

Each step, with who it was emailed to, each skip, and each hold or dispute is on the company's timeline in CRM for people who run billing, without amounts (A Record's Page).

The Daily Notice

Each morning, owners and admins get one notice on Run Billing and in Needs You Today: who was reminded, paused, resumed, and warned about a website removal the day before, and anyone with nobody to email. The notice before is closed when the next one comes.

Pausing Services and Removing Websites

Invoices tells your client, and keeps who is paused and whose website hosting has ended: the Nonpayment card in Settings lists them. Doing the pause and the removal is your own work, or your own systems' through your workspace's connection: a connected system asks which clients are paused or due for removal and acts on them, and a payment shows there at once.

Your own connected systems can also turn Pause Services and Remove Website Hosting on or off, only with the name of the person who approved it and a note; a dry run comes first, and the change is in the Activity Log with both.

AI Agents

These actions are for people only: AI agents and API keys cannot change the steps, skip one, hold collections, or mark an invoice disputed, because they decide what your clients are emailed and whether their services pause.