Note: if you're looking to capture payment methods before a new invoice is issued/outstanding, head over to this article instead.

Configuring Autopay

By default, Autopay is activated for all your customers and works with both cards & direct debits.

We strongly recommend leaving it on as this enables you to automate future collections, but you can selectively disable it for specific customers if needed from their customer details page:

or via our mass-action functionalities from your "Customers" tab for a specific group of such customers.

How does Autopay work?

Capturing a payment method

When your customer pays you online via card or direct direct debit through their portal, they will be prompted to save their payment method:

When a payment method is saved, both your customer & you will be able to visualize it on the portal and your Upflow interface respectively:

View from the customer portal.	View from your customer's details page.

Collecting payments with Autopay

Autopay notification

Two days before an invoice is due, your Upflow platform will automatically send a debit notification to your customer on your behalf to ensure compliance. This notification recaps what will be debited and when.

For new invoices created with a due date less than 48 hours in the future, payments will be collected 2 days later as this is the minimum delay between an autopay notification and a payment collection attempt.

You can visualize scheduled payments directly in your customers' timelines:

Special case: if your customer saved a payment method but did not pay all overdue invoices at the same time, a debit for all outstanding invoices will be issued 2 days later following the same mechanic as above.

Payment collection

On the scheduled Autopay date, your Upflow platform automatically attempts to collect payment on your customer's method which can either succeed or fail.

Autopay is successful

Debit on the payment method has been triggered, and a payment is recorded for corresponding in invoices in Upflow & written back to your systems if applicable.

Autopay is unsuccessful

When a payment collection via Autopay fails, your customer will receive an email notification with the related reason and you will receive an in-app notification so you can get in touch to resolve.

If an error is considered temporary (for example "insufficient funds"), we will attempt payment collection 3 times before marking the saved payment method as "inactive" and stop the Autopay mechanic:

To resolve, your customer can delete & update their saved payment method directly through their customer portal and both you & your customer can re-activate the same previously inactive payment method if needed (for example if a card was re-funded):

View from the customer portal.	View from your customer's details page.

Doing so will restart the Autopay mechanic from the beginning. Because Autopay is triggered every 30 minutes by our systems, you might have to wait up to an hour for the two-day notification and the in-app notifications to be sent.

Useful to know

• It is not possible to exclude individual invoices from the Autopay process for a customer with a saved payment method.
• Promises to pay at later date do not postpone the Autopay payment collection schedule.
• If your customer wishes to manually pay their invoice before the due date, they will have to remove their saved payment method to access the manual payment process.

​Do you have any further questions? Contact our Support team!