Program billing: monthly, installments, upfront, roll-up

The schedules

Monthly: bills every cycle while the enrollment is active. Each monthly option sets its own Billing day of the month (1 to 28) so all families bill together, or bills from each family’s signup date.
Installments: a set of dated payments, one per month (e.g. 3 × $80 in September, October, and November). The enrollment shows “Payment 2 of 3” and the last payment date. See Installment plans below.
Upfront: one charge at registration, done.
Registration fee: an optional one-time fee on top of any schedule, charged when the family registers.

Every option can carry a Name that families see when they choose how to pay, and the copy icon on an option copies it to other groups in the program without touching what those groups already offer. Each option also has a Payment category (“Groups this option’s payments on financial reports”). It starts on Practice fees for monthly and installment options and Registration fees for upfront ones. Changing it later only affects new sign-ups; families already billed keep their category. See Payment categories.

Proration. Two separate settings, both on the payment option:

First month charge (monthly plans billed on the 1st): Prorate to the day they sign up or Charge a full month. Plans anchored to the signup date always charge a full first month, since their cycle starts that day.
Late registration treatment (upfront and one-time fees): Charge the full amount, Prorate to the day they sign up, or Prorate to the month they sign up (the amount splits evenly across the program’s months and charges for the months left, counting the signup month). This needs a program start and end date on the group.

That’s the “why was I charged a partial amount?” families ask about.

Roll-up invoicing. With roll-up on (Settings → Team), everything a family owes in a cycle (program fees, meet fees, one-offs) rolls into a single invoice on your Roll-up Day instead of arriving as separate charges. Queued charges sit under Pending items on the customer until the day runs.

Installment plans

On an ongoing program, Add payment option asks How do families pay?: Monthly, Upfront, or Installments. A group can have up to 10 payment options, but only one monthly and one upfront, so installments fill the rest. Pick Installments and set:

Name: what families see at checkout, like “Fall Installments”.
Payments: the Amount of each payment and the Billing day of the month, then a row per payment with its Month. Each payment must fall in a later month than the one before it, and a plan holds up to 12 payments. The button under the list adds the next one (Add Fourth payment, and so on). Turn on Show advanced to give each payment its own amount. Payments at the same amount in back-to-back months count as one billing stretch, and a plan can have up to 10 stretches. A new amount or a skipped month starts another one.
When to start billing: the run in progress when a family registers, the first run on or after the program starts, or the first run on or after a custom date.
Registering partway through: what a late family pays at signup: All payments to date, in full, Current payment only, in full, Current payment only, prorated to the signup day, or Nothing now — start at the next payment. Later payments always follow the schedule.
Invoicing method, Description, and Payment category, the same as other options. With Email invoice for manual payment, the payment due at signup is emailed as its own invoice too, instead of being charged to the card on file.

Click Create installment plan to save it.

The Add payment option dialog with Installments picked: name, amount of each payment, billing day, and the payment schedule

An option’s type can’t change after it’s created, so families already on it keep their billing.

Step by step

Set a program’s schedule in its fees step when you create the program — price, schedule, registration fee, and any coupons.
To see what a specific family will pay, open their account under Payments → Customers: each enrollment lists the schedule, discount, next charge date and amount.
To change one family’s billing, use the menu on their enrollment — pause collection, cancel, or apply a coupon, rather than editing the whole program.
Team-wide settings live under Settings → Team: roll-up invoices on/off, Roll-up Day, and whether service fees pass to families (Pass on service fees).

Common questions

A family joined mid-month and was charged a strange amount. That’s proration, the partial first cycle. Their next charge is the full amount.

Can different groups pay different prices? Yes. That’s what separate programs are for, and each carries its own fee schedule.

We want one invoice per family per month. Turn on roll-up invoicing and set the Roll-up Day; everything queues to that single invoice.

Can I remove one queued charge before it bills? Yes. On the family’s customer page, each row under Pending items has a Delete item button. A standalone scheduled draft invoice can be deleted from its own menu too. The one thing you can’t delete is a draft generated by an enrollment; to stop those, pause or cancel the plan.

Does changing a group’s price change current families? No. Existing enrollments keep the price they registered at; new registrations get the new price. Reprice an existing family with Update registration.