A payment plan takes a balance and spreads it across equal installments. It lives on the client's Payments tab, and the client can follow it from their portal.
Plans are not available for practices connected to athenahealth.
Start a plan
- Open the client → Payments tab → Payment plan. (The button only shows when the client has no open plan.)
- The plan total is pre-filled with their balance; change it to put only part of the balance on the plan.
- Set an optional down payment, the number of payments (2 to 24), how often (weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly), and the first payment date. Installments are equal, and the last one carries any rounding.
- Choose when to remind the client (no reminder, 1 day, 3 days, or 1 week before each installment).
- Decide on autopay. The card-on-file box shows the client's saved card, or Add a card to save one through Stripe on the spot. The autopay switch is only available once a card is on file. See Card on file and autopay.
- Click Start plan.
On an autopay plan, a down payment is charged to the card immediately; if it is declined the plan stays a draft with the reason shown, and you can start it again once the card is fixed. On a plan without autopay, the down payment shows as due until you record it.
What happens on each due date
- Autopay on: at 9:00 AM practice time the card on file is charged for that installment. The client gets a Stripe receipt, the payment lands in their history described "Payment plan 2 of 6", and the amount is applied to their oldest open charges so the balance and the reports agree.
- Autopay off: nothing is charged. The plan card shows the installment as the next payment, and you record it when it arrives.
A few days ahead, the client gets a reminder email saying what will be charged to which card (or, without autopay, that a payment is due), sent from your verified practice sender.
The plan card
The card shows the total, paid, and remaining amounts, a progress bar, the card it charges, and the next payment with two buttons:
- Charge card — charge the card on file for this installment now (also the way to retry after a decline).
- Record payment — a payment made another way: cash, check, a card run outside FrontDesk, or other, with a note.
Show schedule lists every installment with its status. The ⋯ menu has Pause (nothing is charged until you resume), Resume (pick the next payment date; missed installments move forward from there at the plan's cadence, never charged in a lump), and Cancel (remaining installments are dropped, payments made stay on the account).
Declines and stopped plans
A declined installment shows the reason and the attempt count. The scheduler retries every 3 days, 4 attempts in all. After that the plan shows Stopped, and the office gets a Payment plan stopped notification. Replace the card on the client's Billing tab and click Charge card, or record the payment; either puts the plan back to Active.
The client's side
The portal Billing tab shows the plan: progress, the next payment, the card it charges, and a Pay now button for the next installment (or the down payment while it is due). Paying out of order is not possible. When a client pays there, the office gets a Payment received notice saying it came from the portal. See What clients can do in the portal.
Refunds
Refunding an installment payment in full reopens that installment on hold: it is due again, the client's balance goes back up, but the scheduler will not charge it on its own. The plan card says "On hold" with the date; Charge card or Record payment clears it. The same applies to refunds made in the Stripe dashboard and to lost chargebacks. See Refunds and disputes.
Reporting
The Financial reports tab has a Payment plans section: how many are active, paused, or stopped, the cash expected in the next 30 days, and the plans at risk.