How do I set up a payment plan?

You may have customers that have got behind on payments and you still want to continue trading with them but first you need to set up a payment plan. 

Ask the customer to sign up to your trading term with a saved payment method. We recommend starting with a COD/Pre-Paid or equivalent trading term and max 7 days for these customers. 

Once the customer signs up with a saved payment, it is important that before you Approve the customer you turn off the auto-charge payment feature by going to:

1. Login to Pencil and go to Customers. -> Search for the customer name -> Click on the (...) More Actions button and select "Customer Settings".
   
2. Search for the Customer name
   
3. Click on the (...) More Actions button and select "Customer Settings"
   
4. Under "Reminders" toggle off "Auto-Charge Invoices with Saved Payment Method" and then close the popup. You may also Toggle OFF 'Enabled for same day payments'
   
5. Then you can go to Invoices and find one of the overdue invoices for this customer. 
   
6. Under "Actions" click on the "Payment Plan Offer" icon (it looks like calendar with a + in the middle).
   
7. The invoice will be selected in the popup and if you want to include more than one invoice in the payment plan you can toggle on "Add more invoices?" and select all invoices you want to include in the payment plan.
   
8. Click on Next to continue to the next step.
9. In the next step you need to complete the following:
   
   
   1. For Upfront Payment, enter what the minimum percentage you wish to collect to start the payment plan. The minimum amount is $5.
   2. Select the "Payment Frequency" from the options: Daily, Weekly or Monthly.
   3. Select the "Payment Duration"; which is how many days, weeks or months you wish to run the payment plan for. *Minimum recurring payment is $5.
   4. For "Transaction Fee", you can select if you "On-Charge" or "Absorb" the transaction fee to your customer.
   5. If the customer isn't signed up, you can toggle "Customer Registration Required?" ON and the system will ask the customer to sign up after they make the first payment.
   6. Click Next.
10. If the customer hasn't signed up, you can send the customer an email (you can edit the content first) and click on "Submit" to send.
    
    
    1. The customer will receive an email notification and they can review and complete their payment plan.
11. If the customer has signed up, you will see and can click on "Automatically enter your customer into the payment plan". Then you can select a saved payment method and submit.
    

After you have set up your payment plan, if the customer's circumstances change and they request to either put the next payment back some days or weeks, they pay by bank transfer and the payment plan needs be completed or they want to pay a larger amount in the next payment; you now have all of these options.

To make changes to an existing payment plan follow these steps:

1. Go to Payment Plans.
2. For any Active payment plans you will see three (3) icons:
   1. Review Instalments
      1. Click on this icon to review the previous payments, the next payment, change the next payment date or change the next payment amount.
   2. Mark as Paid
      1. If the customer has paid you directly via bank transfer or any other amount you can enter the amount paid and if paid in full this will close the payment plan. If only a partial payment is made then the remaining payments will update automatically.
   3. Cancel
      1. If you want to stop the payment plan, click on Cancel. If any of the invoices in the payment plan are still not fully paid; they will return to overdue status with the already paid payments applied to the invoice(s) and show the amount the is still outstanding for each invoice.
         

To view how the customer sees and makes payment to start the payment plan please watch this video below:

To view how your customer can create a payment directly from an overdue invoice please watch this video below: