What Billing shows you

Billing is beside your own name in the menu at the top right as well as under Settings, and it has three tabs.

Subscription is what this workspace is on: the plan, when it renews, what it includes and how much of it has been used this period. It also holds the billing email, the card (through Manage billing) and who is answerable for the bill. Choose a plan opens a page of the plans and what they cost. Transaction history is every invoice, with a receipt link on each. Usage is a month to a row: envelopes sent, how many were included, how many went past, and texts.

What counts as one envelope

One envelope is one send. It does not matter how many documents are in the request or how many people are asked to sign it. Asking four people to sign three documents is one envelope, the same as asking one person to sign one.

Drafts cost nothing, because nothing is counted until you send. A request you withdraw after sending stays counted, because the links had already gone out.

On a free trial

While the workspace is on a free trial, the Subscription tab shows the trial: how many days are left, how many of its requests have been sent, the date it ends and what happens then. Beside it are a Choose a plan button and the billing email, so receipts go to the right place from the first one.

When the trial ends, no new requests can be sent until you choose a plan. Requests already out carry on to completion, and you can still read and download everything. Choosing a plan ends the trial and starts the plan, and its billing, that day. Everything already sent stays exactly as it is.

If this workspace is not on a plan

Nothing is counted and there is no limit on what you can send. That is what the Plan panel on the Subscription tab says when it applies. The Usage tab still shows what was sent each month, with no limit to be inside or past.

If it is

The Subscription tab shows what the plan includes each period, and This period on the same tab shows how much of that has been used.

Extra envelopes, only once you agree

When this month's included envelopes are used, the next send waits. Nothing past the allowance is sent or charged until an Owner of the workspace, or its billing owner, chooses how much extra to allow this month: $20, $50, $100, another amount, or no limit. The choice is offered on the screen where the send waits, and on the Usage tab. Anybody else is told who can make it.

Extra envelopes are charged at the plan's own rate, on the next invoice. When the amount agreed is used, sending waits again until somebody raises it. Each choice is recorded with who made it, when and how much, and the Usage tab shows this month's use, the extra so far, about what it adds to the next invoice, and the limit with who set it. The limit can be changed at any time.

Nothing expires while a send waits. Requests already sent carry on, and anybody signing one is never stopped. On pay as you go every envelope is charged at its rate, so there is no allowance and nothing waits.

"Over the allowance so far" is a fact: it is what has already happened. "Expected by the end of the period" is an estimate from the rate so far. It says "Not known yet" until a quarter of the period has passed, because the first few days are not enough to go on.

Checking a bill

The Usage tab lists every envelope counted this period with the request it belongs to, and offers the same list as a file you can open in a spreadsheet. Dates in that file are UTC so they read the same wherever it is opened. Above it, each month shows what was sent, what was included and what went past, which is what an overage is charged on.

Transaction history is a copy of what the payment provider actually billed. The provider's own copy is the one that counts, and each row links to it; a paid invoice offers its receipt for download there.

Starting a plan

Choose a plan, on the Subscription tab or in the bar shown during a free trial, opens a page of the plans, monthly or annual. Each has a Choose this plan button. It hands you to the payment provider's own page to enter a card, and brings you back when you are done. The plan usually appears here within a second or two. What confirms it is the provider telling us, rather than the page you came back to.

If you have a promotion code, type it into the box above the plans before choosing one. It is checked straight away, and a code that is not recognised is refused there rather than being quietly ignored. A code in use is shown on the Subscription tab afterwards.

Starting a plan commits the workspace to paying for something, so it is an administrator's to do. If the button is not there, the page says why underneath the plans.

What is held where

Card details are never entered into this product and never stored here. They, the billing address and the ABN are given to the payment provider directly. Stopping a plan or replacing the card is done through the provider's own portal, which Manage billing on on the Subscription tab opens for you once you are on a plan. That portal cannot move a subscription to a different plan, so to change plans, ask us.

Who is answerable for the bill

The account that starts the subscription becomes the billing owner, and the Subscription tab names them. The bill can be handed to any other administrator of this workspace from there. An ordinary member cannot hold it, because a bill should sit with somebody who can actually administer the workspace it is for.

While a subscription is running the billing owner cannot be removed from the workspace. Move the bill to another administrator first, or close the subscription.

What we email you, and where

Receipts and payment notices go to the billing email. Unless an administrator sets a different address, such as a shared accounts inbox, that is the billing owner's, and it moves with the bill. The payment provider's record uses the same address.

You are emailed when a payment goes through, with the plan, the amount, the period it covers and a link to the receipt. You are emailed when a payment does not go through, saying what failed. Sending carries on while the card is tried again over about two weeks, and the email says roughly when it would stop. On an annual plan you are emailed fourteen days before it renews, with the amount and the date.

You are also emailed when 80% of a month's included envelopes have been used, and again when all of them have, with the rate for extra envelopes. Once each a month.

What billing never does

Nothing about billing ever deletes a document, a request, a signature or a certificate. An unpaid subscription stops new requests going out; everything already signed stays exactly where it is, and stays verifiable, whether or not the workspace is paying for anything.