How payment promises work

A payment promise is a note against an invoice that says the customer has agreed to pay a certain amount by a certain date. Paidnice keeps track of whether the promise was kept, and can hold off reminders and fees until the promised date so you are not chasing someone who has already told you when they will pay.

Payment promises are switched on per organisation. If you cannot see them, ask support to enable the feature for your account.

Recording a promise

There are three ways a promise gets recorded.

From the invoice page. Open the invoice and find the Payment promise row in the details panel. Click Record promise, enter the date the customer said they will pay, the amount (this defaults to the full amount due), and any notes. You can also tick Also set the expected payment date to push the date through to Xero or QuickBooks as the expected payment date.

From an escalation. On an escalation for an invoice, use Customer promised to pay. This records the promise and adds a note to the escalation with the outcome “Customer promised to pay”.

From the customer portal. If you allow it, customers can submit a promise themselves from the invoice page in the portal. See Let customers promise to pay from the portal.

An invoice can only have one open promise at a time. To change the date or amount, cancel the current promise from the invoice page and record a new one. Cancelled promises stay in the invoice timeline.

What happens while a promise is open

Every policy has a setting called Skip when payment promised, which is on by default. While the invoice has an open promise, a policy with this setting on will not run if it is scheduled before the promised date. Reminders, SMS alerts, escalations, late fees and discounts all respect this setting.

Policies scheduled on or after the promised date are not affected, and neither are policies that use the promised date as their trigger (see below).

If you want a particular policy to keep running regardless, for example a monthly statement style reminder, turn Skip when payment promised off on that policy. A promise is lighter than freezing the invoice: it has a date, an amount and an outcome, and chasing resumes on its own.

The invoice list shows a small raised hand icon next to any invoice with an open promise, and you can filter the list by Payment Promise to see them all.

Kept or broken

Paidnice checks open promises every hour.

A promise is kept when the invoice is paid in full, or when payments dated on or after the day the promise was made add up to at least the promised amount.

A promise is broken when the promised date passes, plus a grace period, and the promised amount has not been paid. The grace period defaults to one day and can be changed in settings. What to do next is in Follow up when a promise is broken.

Both outcomes are written to the invoice timeline. When a promise is broken, Paidnice notifies the user assigned to the invoice. If nobody is assigned to the invoice, it notifies the user assigned to the contact, and if nobody is assigned there either, it notifies everyone in the organisation who has the Broken Payment Promise email notification turned on (under My Account).

Policies that react to promises

Two new trigger dates are available when creating email, SMS and escalation policies.

Promise broken. Runs a set number of days after a promise is broken. Use this for a firmer follow up. Each broken promise triggers the policy once, so if the customer promises again and breaks that promise too, the policy runs again. If a new promise is recorded after one was broken, the broken promise policies stop and the new promise takes over.

Promised payment date. Runs a set number of days before, on or after the promised date. A reminder two days before the promised date is a common use. These policies are never skipped by the open promise, and each new promise schedules its own run.

Settings

Under Settings, Advanced, Default Behaviour:

• Payment promise grace period. How many days after the promised date to wait before marking the promise as broken.
• Payment promises set the expected payment date. When on, recording a promise also sets the invoice expected payment date in your accounting system. In the app this is the default for the tick box on the promise form. Promises submitted through the portal always follow this setting.

Under Settings, Portal:

• Allow customers to submit payment promises. Shows a Promise to pay button on unpaid invoices in the customer portal.
• Require verification for payment promises. Customers must verify their email address before they can submit a promise, even if secure portal mode is off for everything else.

Reporting

The dashboard shows the share of promises that were kept over the reporting window, alongside the on-time payment rate, once at least one promise has been resolved.