Every paid client has a Stripe billing portal where they manage their subscription, and you can open it too. This article walks through what the portal contains. Clients reach it from Settings > Billing in their platform; you open the same portal with Open Customer Portal on their client card.
Who Can Open It
Requirements and Limits
The portal button on the client card is visible to Owners only. It works for any paid client whose Stripe subscription is Trialing, Active, Past Due, Unpaid or Paused. It isn't available for free clients, who have no Stripe subscription, or for clients whose subscription is already canceled or expired. On your side it needs Stripe connected and your own domain in place.
Plan and Payment Overview
What the Client Sees First
At the top of the billing portal, the client sees their current plan, how much they're paying, and when their next payment is due.
Payment Methods
Add Payment Method
If there's no payment method on file yet — for example, during a trial that didn't require one — the client clicks Add payment method to connect one. This becomes the method Stripe attempts to charge. Clients can add more than one: a default method Stripe charges first, and a backup it falls back to if the first one fails. To swap cards, they add the new one and then delete the old one from the same section.
Billing Information
Invoice Details
Below payment methods, clients can fill in their billing information — name, address, phone number, and tax ID (for example, a VAT number) — using Update information. These details automatically appear on their invoices.
Invoice History
Invoice History
Further down, the Invoice history section lists every invoice Stripe has automatically generated for the client's payments. Clicking a payment and then Download invoice saves it as a PDF.
Changing the Plan
Update Subscription
In the top right, Update subscription lets the client switch to a different plan — from the list of your plans that aren't hidden from the billing portal. Plans priced in a currency other than the client's own aren't offered.
If the plan uses the Price per Location pricing model, the client can also increase or decrease the quantity here to unlock more locations (which they then add from Settings > Locations). On Package Price plans the quantity is fixed and can't be adjusted.
After choosing a new plan or quantity, they click Continue, and Stripe calculates what's due today using prorated billing (see below). They can also apply a promotion code before completing the change. Clicking Subscribe and pay finalizes it: the plan changes, and the platform updates automatically with the new plan's features, integrations and limits. The whole process is self-service.
Understanding Prorated Billing
How Proration Works
Prorated billing is how Stripe handles a plan or quantity change partway through a billing cycle, so the client only ever pays for what they actually used at each price. Every change made in the portal is invoiced this way.
For example, imagine a client is halfway through a monthly cycle on a $10/month plan and upgrades to a $30/month plan. Stripe credits them for the unused half of the old plan (-$5) and charges them for the remaining half at the new price (+$15) — a net charge of $10 due immediately. From the next billing cycle onward, they're simply charged the full new price. This means clients are never overcharged for time they didn't use on the old plan, or undercharged for the new one.
Canceling the Subscription
Cancel Subscription
The Cancel subscription button, next to Update subscription, lets the client cancel. The cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, not immediately: they keep using the platform until then and aren't charged again.
While the cancellation is pending, their card in your Clients section shows N days until cancelation in red, with an info note explaining that the subscription stays valid until the period ends. That window is your chance to win them back. When the period does end, the subscription terminates and the client's account, locations and data are deleted.
If you need to end a subscription right away instead, use Cancel subscription on the client card in your Clients section. That cancels immediately and deletes the client (see the Manage Paid Client article).
Why It Matters
The Control Center for a Subscription
The billing portal is the control center for a client's subscription: payment methods, plan and quantity, invoices, billing details and cancellation all live here, available to both you and your client at any time. Your clients also have a FAQ button next to it in their Billing section, which walks them through each of these operations step by step.