What happens when a customer doesn't pay?

The platform follows the same steps every time. 1) A card is declined: the customer gets their pay link by email, and by text once you've connected your own text number (until then your team texts from their phones), and the charge lands in Failed payments (Invoices → Failed payments); your office is alerted once, and it stays on your weekly summary until it is resolved. 2) Automatic retries: a soft decline (like insufficient funds) is retried on the card up to 3 times — 1, 3 and 7 days after the decline, between 10am and 5pm your time. A lost, stolen or blocked card is never retried, and neither is a charge the customer has a pay link open for. 3) Reminders: the customer is reminded 3, 7 and 14 days after the decline (email, plus a text within your texting hours once your own text number is connected), each with the pay link; net-terms invoices get a reminder 3 days before due, on the due date, then 7, 14 and 30 days late. Every send is on the customer's message log. 4) Your office can press Retry card, or Charge another saved card, on the Failed payments row or the booking's charges. 5) At 30 days unpaid the row says Consider write-off. 6) Write off asks for a reason (required), puts the charge on a bad-debt invoice in one step and takes it off the chase list; the write-off report (Reports) prints the reason. If QuickBooks is connected and the money was posted there as an open invoice, the write-off posts as a credit memo on your chosen bad-debt item. 7) Reinstate (Invoices → Bad debt) puts it back as owed, reverses the QuickBooks write-off, and the customer can pay the invoice normally. Every step stops by itself once the balance is paid, voided, marked not owed or written off. Retries and reminders are on by default and can be changed or switched off under Settings → Payments & Invoicing → Unpaid Balances. Optional, off by default: a monthly administrative fee, a monthly finance charge (a percentage, never compounded, with an optional cap), a returned-payment fee, and blocking online booking for a customer who owes more than an amount you set. Fees are printed in your customer terms and on every invoice and pay page, and only apply to balances created after the customer accepted those terms. State laws limit late fees — your rates are your responsibility.