Recurring billing, card retries, overdue reminders and finance charges

Overview#

TradesWork runs a billing job every morning. It invoices membership dues and charges the customer's default saved card, retries cards that fail on a schedule you set, texts polite reminders with the pay link when invoices go past due, optionally adds finance charges, and can put long-overdue customers on credit hold. The Billing & Collections page shows what's coming, what's retrying and what needs a person.

Before you start#

• Billing settings need billing.manage (Owner, Admin). Finance charges can only be turned on by the Owner.

• Run billing now needs billing.run (Owner, Admin).

• Retry now and Skip need payments.record (Owner, Admin, Accounting).

• Automatic card charges need Stripe connected. Without it, dues are invoiced and marked Collect manually.

• Reminder texts need texting set up.

Steps#

Set up billing#

1. Go to Settings › Accounting › Billing & Collections.

2. Membership dues and card retries: tick Charge membership dues to the card on file and set Retry a failed card on these days after the first failure (default 1, 3, 7, 14).

3. Overdue reminders: tick Text polite reminders with the pay link and set Days past due (default 3, 7, 14, 30). Reminders respect quiet hours and STOP, and stop once the invoice is paid.

4. Finance charges (optional, Owner only): choose Monthly interest or Flat late fee, set Grace period (days past due), Monthly interest rate (%) or Flat late fee ($), Minimum charge ($) and Cap per month ($, optional). Tick I've checked the rules where we work and I'm responsible for these terms.

5. Credit holds: see Credit holds.

6. Click Save billing settings.

Watch the daily run#

1. Go to Accounting › Billing & Collections.

2. The top shows Next 30 days, Retrying, Past due and Credit holds.

3. Today's billing run runs automatically every morning. Click Run billing now to run it immediately; running it again the same day never charges twice.

Work what needs attention#

1. In Needs attention, each row shows Customer, Plan, Period, Status, Balance, Last try and Next retry.

2. Click Retry now to charge the card again, or Skip to stop retrying and texting (the invoice stays open for you to collect).

3. Statuses: Due, Processing, Paid, Retrying, Past due, Collect manually, Skipped.

What happens when a card fails#

1. The customer gets a text with a card-update link and the pay link.

2. TradesWork retries on your schedule.

3. After the last retry the charge is Past due and normal overdue reminders take over.

Settings that change this#

• Settings › Accounting › Billing & Collections: everything above.

• Settings › Operations › Memberships: membership types, prices and billing frequency.

• Settings › Integrations › Payment Processing: Stripe connection.

Tips#

• Collect a card when someone joins a membership so dues never need chasing.

• Start finance charges only after checking local rules. They're added as one non-taxable line per invoice per month.

• Commercial service agreements are billed by the agreements run (see Service agreements for commercial customers).

Troubleshooting#

• "No card processor is connected, so membership dues are invoiced and left for the office to collect." → connect Stripe, or collect by hand.

• "Confirm that you've checked the late fee and interest rules where you work before turning finance charges on." → tick the confirmation box.

• Finance charge section is locked → only the Owner can turn it on.

• A customer keeps getting reminders after paying by check → record the payment on the invoice; reminders stop once it's paid.

FAQ#

Are reminders sent by email? No. Reminders are texts with the pay link.

Will a customer be charged twice if I click Run billing now? No. Each period is charged once.

Coming from ServiceTitan#

• Same idea as: recurring service billing for memberships and collections follow-up.

• Different: retries, reminders, finance charges and auto credit holds are one settings page and one daily run.

• Where it lived: ServiceTitan recurring billing and collections tools; Accounting › Billing & Collections in TradesWork.