How the apply and removal dates work together

A discount policy has two date settings and they answer two different questions. Apply this discount up to is a deadline for putting the discount on. Remove this discount on is the date it comes off again if the invoice is still unpaid. Get the pair right and the customer sees a clear offer: pay by this date and keep the discount.

For the rest of the policy, see How prompt payment discounts work.

Apply this discount up to

This is not the date the discount is added. Paidnice adds the discount as soon as it sees a new eligible invoice, usually within a few minutes of it being approved in Xero or QuickBooks. The setting is the latest point at which an invoice can still get the discount. If the invoice turns up after that, it is skipped and the Applicable Policy results on the invoice say “The date for the discount has already passed”.

You set a number, Days or Weekdays, a direction, and the date it counts from.

• Issue Date lets you pick On the, After or Before. The default for a new policy is up to 2 days after the issue date. Pick a longer window if you create invoices some time after their issue date, for example invoices raised on Friday for work done on Monday. The limit is 30 days after the issue date.
• Due Date only offers Before, up to 90 days before. Use this when you want the discount available on any invoice that still has a reasonable amount of time to run.

The deadline exists to stop old invoices picking up a discount. Invoices that already existed when you created the policy are left alone unless you process them by hand.

Remove this discount on

This is the date the discount line is taken off the invoice if it is still unpaid. Paidnice schedules a removal action for this date when it applies the discount. You can see it on the Actions page and in the invoice timeline, and it has a Remove Now button if you want to pull the discount early.

You set a number of days, a direction, and the date it counts from.

• Due Date lets you pick After, On The or Before. The default for a new policy is 30 days before the due date.
• Issue Date only offers After, with a minimum of 1 day.

When the removal date arrives:

• If the invoice has been paid, the discount stays and the removal is marked as not needed.
• If the invoice is still unpaid, the discount line is removed and the customer owes the full amount.
• If the invoice has a part payment, Paidnice still tries to remove the line. Xero and QuickBooks do not always allow an invoice with payments to be edited, so this can fail. Failures show on the invoice as an error.

How they interact

Both dates are worked out from the same invoice, so what matters is where they land relative to each other and to today.

• The removal date is already in the past when the invoice arrives. The discount is not applied. The invoice shows “Invoice due date is sooner than the discount period”. This happens with short payment terms, for example a removal date of 30 days before the due date on an invoice due in 14 days. Shorten the removal setting or switch it to count from the issue date.
• The apply deadline has passed but the removal date has not. The discount is not applied. The deadline wins.
• Both are in the future. The discount goes on now and the removal is scheduled.

Paidnice does not check that the apply deadline falls before the removal date. It does not need to, because applying always happens now and removal always happens later.

The customer is only ever told about the removal date. The Description on the invoice line can include #DiscountDate, which is the removal date, and the discount email template has a DiscountRemoveDate merge field.

Examples

Invoice issued 1 March, due 31 March, imported on 2 March.

The same invoice imported on 6 March, with 2 days after issue date: not applied, because the deadline was 3 March.

Things to know

• Changing the policy only affects invoices that get a discount from then on. Discounts already applied keep their original removal date.
• If an invoice’s amount or due date changes in Xero or QuickBooks after the discount is applied, the removal date does not move.
• Re-apply discount on a completed removal puts the line back, but does not schedule a new removal. Take it off by hand if you need to.
• Discounts, like other policies, respect Skip when payment promised and Skip while a query is open. See How payment promises work and How invoice queries work.