Billing Overview
This page is the map of everything about money in Threadline. It shows what each billing page is for and the order in which to set them up. Each page then has its own guide.
What it is
If you sell Threadline to other businesses, you decide what they can buy (plans), how they pay (gateways), how much they pay (prices, coupons, tax, currencies) and you keep a record of what happened (subscriptions, payments, invoices). Together these live under Clients & Billing in the Owner sidebar.
It is all optional. If you only use Threadline for your own business you can skip it. Your own workspace is never asked to pick a plan.
The problem it solves
Charging customers normally means gluing together a payment provider, a price list, tax rules, discount codes and a spreadsheet of who paid. Threadline does the gluing: a customer picks a plan, pays on a gateway you chose, gets an invoice, and their access starts and ends by itself.
Set it up in this order
- Currencies — choose the currencies you sell in and one default.
- Payment Gateways — switch on at least one and paste its keys.
- Pricing Plans — create the plans: price, limits, features, trial.
- Tax Rates — only if you must charge tax.
- Coupons — only if you want promo codes.
- Subscriptions & Payments — day-to-day: see who is paying, grant a plan, open an invoice, record a refund.
The gateway comes before a paid plan. A paid plan’s price is created on every gateway that is switched on at that moment, so with no gateway on you cannot create a paid plan.
How a purchase flows
- A customer signs up and opens Plans in their workspace.
- They pick a plan and a billing cycle, and (if you have more than one) a payment method.
- At checkout they may enter a promo code. Their billing country is used to find the tax rate.
- They pay on the gateway's own page. Card details never touch your server.
- The gateway tells Threadline the payment worked (a webhook). Threadline starts the subscription, gives the invoice a number and emails the customer.
- Every period the customer is charged again. If a payment fails the subscription goes past due, and later expired if it is not fixed.
Money emails
Customers are emailed when a subscription starts, renews, fails to renew, is cancelled, expires, changes plan, or is about to end a trial or a period. Change the wording under Mail & Email Templates.
Who can do what
| Permission | Page it opens |
|---|---|
| Manage pricing plans | Pricing Plans |
| Manage payment gateways | Payment Gateways |
| Manage currencies / coupons / tax rates | Currencies / Coupons / Tax Rates |
| View subscriptions, Grant, cancel and resume subscriptions | Subscriptions |
| View payments and invoices, Record refunds | Payments |
Give a finance teammate only the last two rows and they can see the money without touching prices. See Roles, Staff & Audit Log.