Prepay Your Bill With Credit Top-ups

What's New

Until now there was one way to pay for FastComments: we charged your card when an invoice came due. That's fine for most accounts, but not all of them. Some finance departments would rather make one payment and be done for a while. Some Flex customers would rather pay for a busy month ahead of time than be surprised by it.

Now you can put money on the account. The billing page has a new Manage Credits button, next to View Invoices and Invoice Settings. It opens a Credits page where you can see your balance and add to it.

Credit is money held on your FastComments account, in your billing currency. When an invoice is created, your credit is applied first, and only the remainder, if any, is charged to your card. That covers subscription renewals, Flex usage charges, and anything else we invoice you for. There's nothing to configure and nothing to remember; once the balance is there, it's used.

Adding Credit

1. Open My Account -> Billing Info and click Manage Credits.
2. Under Add credit, pick one of the preset amounts (10, 25, 50, or 100 in your currency) or choose Other amount and type your own, anywhere from 5 to 10,000 per top-up.
3. Click Add. Your saved card is charged, and if your bank wants you to confirm the payment, that happens right there.
4. The page shows Credit added with your new balance.

Every top-up is listed in the Past top-ups table on the same page, with its date, amount, and whether it was Credited, Pending, or Failed. If a card is declined, nothing is charged and the balance doesn't change.

Only the account owner or a user with the Billing Admin permission can add credit, the same people who can change the plan or the payment method today.

The Details

Credit isn't a discount, a points system, or a separate currency. It's your money, in your currency, sitting on your account until an invoice uses it. The balance shows on the billing page whenever it's above zero, and each invoice shows the credit that was applied to it.

Top-ups use the payment method already saved on your account, so there's no second checkout to set up. If you haven't saved a card yet, the Credits page points you to the billing page to add one first.

Accounts billed through Shopify or BigCommerce, and accounts that are invoiced outside the dashboard, are paid on those platforms instead, so they won't see the Manage Credits button.

Documentation

The new Billing guide covers credits in full: who can add it, the limits, how it's applied, bank confirmation, declined cards, and the Past top-ups table.

In Conclusion

If you've wanted to prepay, keep a buffer against usage charges, or make your accounting department's month easier, this is for you. Let us know below how it works for you, and what else would make billing simpler.

Cheers!