Contract screen sections

The cards that make up the Contract and Charge screens. The account header is described with the Account sections, and the paid-by and processed-by cards with the Transaction sections; comments and the audit history are in Sections on every screen.

Contract header

The contract header is the strip under the account header that tells you what agreement you are looking at: how much is collected and how often, the contract's reference, and where it stands right now. It answers "what has this customer agreed to pay, is it still running, and does anything need attention". On the Contract screen it also carries the buttons that pause, restart or end the contract.

Where it appears

At the top of the Contract screen and above every screen that works on one of its parts (Edit a contract, Charge, Edit an upcoming charge or payment, and the resume screen). It also appears on the Transaction screen, and on the Refund a transaction and Capture a transaction screens, whenever the payment belongs to a contract; a payment taken without a contract has no contract header.

What it shows

• Icon — a quick read of the kind of contract: a repeating-calendar icon for a recurring contract, a calendar-with-clock for a contract paid in scheduled instalments, a clock for a single payment due on a later date, and a basket for a one-off payment. A recurring or instalment contract that is failing, unresolved or in error shows a warning triangle instead, so a contract in trouble stands out before you read its status.
• Amount and frequency — for a recurring contract, the amount collected each time and how often, for example "10.00 / monthly"; when the contract is for a fixed number of payments, that count follows, as in "x 12". For a contract paid in instalments you see the total amount and the number of instalments, for example "600.00 / 12 instalments". A contract that is neither shows its description instead, or Scheduled Payment when it is a single payment due on a later date, or Checkout for a plain one-off payment.
• Contract reference — the contract's own reference (the one your systems and the customer use). On any screen other than the Contract screen it is a link back to the contract; on the Contract screen itself it is plain text with a copy button next to it.
• Status badge — where the contract stands. Read it as follows:
  • ACTIVE (green) — running normally; payments are collected as they fall due.
  • PENDING (blue) — a payment is in flight and the outcome is not yet known.
  • FAILING (amber) — a collection has failed and the contract is in its retry sequence. The arrears section on the Contract screen tells you how far through the retries it is.
  • SUSPENDED (amber) — paused by a member of staff. No new charges are raised and no payments are attempted until it is resumed. Whatever was owed is still owed.
  • CANCELLING (amber) — the contract has been terminated but still owes money that was not written off; collection of that balance carries on, and no new charges are raised.
  • CANCELLED (blue) — terminated and finished. Nothing further is collected.
  • completed (blue) — the contract ran its course: every payment it was set up for has been taken.
  • UPDATED (blue) — this is an older version of a contract that has since been amended. It is kept as a historical record; the live agreement is the newer contract, reached from the version timeline on the Contract screen. Nothing can be changed on an updated contract.
  • FAILED, UNRESOLVED and ERROR (red) — the contract needs attention. Failed means the retry sequence ran out without a successful payment; unresolved means a payment's outcome could not be confirmed; error means the last collection hit a processing error rather than a decline.
  • ABANDONED (grey) — the contract was started in the checkout but never completed, so it never took a payment.
• Description or Initiative — a second line under the title, shown only when there is something to say: the contract's description if one was entered, otherwise the initiative the contract was raised under (nothing is shown for the general initiative).
• NO PAYMENT METHOD (red badge) — on the same second line, the contract has no card or bank account attached, so nothing can be collected from it until one is set. See Change payment method on the Contract screen. No badge means a payment method is in place.

While the contract is still loading the header shows a spinner in place of the title.

What you can do

Things to note

• The action buttons are shown only to users with contract permission, and Suspend, Resume and Terminate only when recurring contract editing is enabled for your organisation.
• Suspend, Terminate and Edit appear on the Contract screen only. Resume is also offered from the Transaction, Refund a transaction and Capture a transaction screens when the payment's contract is suspended, cancelling or cancelled. On the contract's own sub-screens (edit, resume, charge and upcoming-charge screens) the header is read-only.
• Suspend is offered on a recurring contract that is not already suspended; Resume on a recurring contract that is suspended, cancelling or cancelled; Terminate on a recurring contract that is active, pending, failing, suspended, cancelling, unresolved or in error. None of them is offered on a contract paid in instalments, on a one-off, or on a contract that has finished.
• A contract showing UPDATED offers no actions at all. Editing, suspending, resuming and terminating are done on the newer version it was replaced by.
• In the Terminate pop-up the write-off box is ticked and locked on an unresolved contract, so terminating one always writes off the balance. On a contract that is already cancelling the box starts ticked but you can untick it.
• Terminating leaves the contract's charges and their history in place, so a terminated contract can still be resumed later. To clear a balance for good, void the charge from the Charge screen.
• If a suspend or terminate cannot be completed you see "Sorry, an error has occurred please try again later." and the contract is left as it was.
• The header does not show the contract's next charge date, balance or payment method details; those are in the statement, arrears and paid-by sections of the Contract screen.

Arrears

The arrears card tells you where a contract stands when its payments have not been collected: how much is overdue, how long it has been that way, what happened the last time a collection was tried, when the next attempt will be, and how far the automatic retries have got. It answers the question "is this contract behind, and is anything still being done about it?" and gives you the two ways to intervene: take the money now, or choose when it is next tried.

Where it appears

On the Contract screen, above the statement, only when the contract is behind or has a history of failed collections. A contract with nothing overdue and no failed attempts has no arrears card at all.

What it shows

The card is collapsible; its heading carries the essentials so you can read them without opening it.

• Arrears heading badges. An amount badge (highlighted in warning colour) shows what is currently overdue. On a cancelled contract that was never brought up to date, a Written off badge shows instead of, or alongside, the amount: the balance was written off when the contract was terminated, and nothing further will be collected.
• Overdue — the amount outstanding, in the contract's currency. It is shown only when there is something to collect. For some older contracts the figure is taken from the statement's balance as at today, so it may fill in a moment after the rest of the page.
• Outstanding since — the date from which the contract has been continuously behind, with how long ago that was in brackets ("3 weeks ago"). This comes from the statement, so it appears once the statement has loaded, and is absent when the balance is settled.
• Last attempt — when the most recent collection was tried, how long ago, and its result as a status badge: Approved (green), Declined or Abandoned (red), Pending (blue), or Not attempted, Unresolved and Unattributed (amber). A declined or not-attempted last attempt is the usual reason a contract is in arrears; Not attempted means the payment method could not be used at all, typically an expired or archived card.
• Next attempt — the date and time of the next automatic collection. This is whichever comes first: a retry already scheduled for the overdue amount, or the contract's next regular charge. When it is the regular charge (no sooner retry is planned), it is marked (next charge), meaning the arrears will be attempted together with that charge. This row is not shown on a cancelled or completed contract, since nothing further will be attempted.
• Automated collection — how far the contract is through your organisation's retry sequence. A row of dots, one per retry in the sequence, fills in as attempts are made, with a 1 of 3 style count beside it while retries are still to come. Once the sequence is used up the count is replaced by an Exhausted badge. Exhausted on next charge only means the timed retries are finished but the overdue amount will still be tried again whenever the contract's next charge is collected; Exhausted on its own means there is no further charge to try it on, so nothing more happens automatically until you schedule a payment or take one.
• Collection attempts — shown in place of the dots when your organisation has no retry sequence configured: simply the number of failed attempts so far.

What you can do

Things to note

• Both controls are shown only to users with permission to take contract payments, and only when recurring-contract editing is enabled for your organisation.
• Make Payment is withheld when a collection is due within the next five minutes or ran within the last hour, to avoid taking the money twice. It is also withheld on a contract that is still being set up, cancelled, or whose last payment is pending or unresolved.
• Schedule Payment is withheld while a collection is pending (waiting on the bank's answer) and when the next payment is already less than five minutes away. It is still offered when the retries are exhausted and nothing is scheduled; that is exactly when you would want to set one.
• A contract that was amended into a newer version has no arrears card: its balance was carried forward to the new contract, so look there instead. Follow the link in the version timeline on the Contract screen.
• On a cancelled or completed contract the card is history only: the amount, last attempt and retry progress remain, the next attempt does not, and neither control is offered.
• The card shows the position now. For the individual charges and payments that make up the arrears, read the statement below it.

Contract statement

The statement is the contract's timeline: every invoice raised, every payment taken or attempted, the events that shaped the contract, and the charges still to come, in date order with a running balance. It answers "what has this contract been charged, what has actually been paid, what is owed today, and what happens next".

Where it appears

On the Contract screen, as the collapsible Statement card. It appears on every contract; the upcoming part of the timeline only appears while the contract is still live.

What it shows

The card header summarises the contract before you expand it:

• Created (or Amended, for a contract that replaced an earlier version) and the date.
• The completion status and date once the contract has finished, or Suspended while it is paused.
• Next charge (or First charge before any charge has been raised) and its date, Active until when a keep-active date is set, and the amount remaining on a scheduled contract that still has an outstanding total.

Above the timeline:

• Manual payments not available — an automated payment is due to be processed shortly. appears when an automatic collection is about to run (within the next five minutes) or has just run (within the last hour). While it is shown, the Make payment control in the arrears section is withheld so a manual payment cannot collide with the automatic one.

The timeline is a table:

Lines you will see on the timeline, oldest first:

• Contract Instructed and Contract Created — when the contract was agreed and when it was set up; the instructed line appears only when the two fall on different days. A contract that replaced an earlier version shows Contract Updated from with a link to that earlier contract instead of Contract Created.
• Invoice with the charge reference and a status badge — each charge raised on the contract, dated by its due date, with the amount in Invoiced. The badge reads PAID, DUE (fell due within the last hour), OVERDUE, UNPAID (not yet due), VOIDED (written off) or CANCELLED. The reference opens the charge.
• Unpaid Invoice Brought Forward with the charge reference — a charge carried over unpaid from the previous version of the contract.
• Invoice reference transferred to contract — on the earlier version of an amended contract, a charge that was carried forward to the newer version. The amount is struck through because it is now owed on the other contract; both links open the relevant record.
• Invoice reference written-off — the write-off of a charge that had already been partly paid. The written-off amount appears in Invoiced in parentheses, reducing the balance.
• Paid, Authorised, Captured, Void or Refund — a successful transaction, with a link to it by its reference. Badges after the link tell you more: FULLY REFUNDED or an amount refunded where the payment was later refunded; ECOM (customer entered), MOTO (staff entered) or SCHEDULER (system initiated) for how the payment was started, explained on hover; and a clock badge such as 180h on a payment sent to the bank ahead of the invoice due date because the payment method requires advance notice. A Refund reduces both the invoiced and the paid totals, so it leaves the balance unchanged and shows no balance of its own.
• Payment attempt or Refund attempt — a transaction that did not succeed, struck through with a status badge (for example Declined, Not attempted, Pending, Unresolved). Struck-through amounts do not count towards any total or the balance.
• Remaining authorisation released — after a partial capture, the part of the authorisation that was not taken.
• Current Balance (debit) or Current Balance (credit) — the today marker, with the balance as at today. It separates what has happened from what is scheduled, and is the figure the arrears section uses. It appears on scheduled contracts and on any contract with future charges.
• Card expiring — the last day of the month the contract's card expires, shown only when a future charge falls on or after it, so you can see a payment that will fail unless the card is replaced.
• Card attached — when the contract's current payment method was added, shown when that was a day or more after the contract started (for example a replacement card after a decline).
• Kept Active Until — the date the contract is being held open past its final payment so a late amendment can still be applied. Shown only while that date is in the future.
• Next Charge Creation Trigger and Next Payment Dispatch, each with nh advance notice — for payment methods that need notice (bank debits), the moment the next invoice will be raised and the moment the next payment will be sent to the bank, ahead of the due dates. Shown only while that moment is still to come.
• Future Invoice Due — each charge still to be raised, with its amount in Invoiced and no balance. The first carries a Next Charge badge; it reads Pending Invoice instead once its date has passed but the invoice has not yet been raised. More charges scheduled... follows the last one when the schedule continues beyond what is listed.
• Create Next Invoice (or Pending Invoice) — the next charge date, shown in place of the future invoices when a detailed schedule is not available.
• Next Payment Attempt (or Pending Payment once the time has passed) — when the next automatic collection will run. (retry n**)** after it means the collection is a retry of a failed payment and shows which retry it is.
• Contract Completed, Contract Cancelled or Contract Updated to with a link to the newer contract — how and when the contract ended.

The footer gives the totals for Invoiced, Authorisations (when shown), Payments and the closing Balance, and an Overdue line with the overdue amount when anything is overdue. On a narrow screen the table is replaced by a summary of Invoiced, Paid, Balance, Overdue and, where relevant, Authorised.

When Show full contract chain is switched on for an amended contract, the card shows one statement per version, oldest first, each headed by its amount and frequency and its contract reference; the version you are on is badged VIEWING and the others link to their own Contract screen.

What you can do

Things to note

• The statement is loaded when you expand the card; a spinner shows while it loads. It reloads itself after a payment is made through the checkout.
• Long statements are collapsed around today. When there are more than 20 past lines, the first 3 and the most recent 12 are kept and the rest are replaced by n entries omitted. When there are more than 12 future charges, the first 6 are kept and the rest by n future charges omitted. Schedules of 12 charges or fewer are always shown in full.
• Edit Next Charge is offered only while the contract has a next charge date and is still in progress, to users with contract payment permission, and only when editing of recurring contracts is enabled for your organisation.
• Charges that were written off or cancelled without any payment against them are left off the timeline: a cancelled charge never fell due, and a written-off one nets to nothing, so listing either would overstate the invoiced total and every balance after it. A charge that had money paid against it before being written off or cancelled stays on the timeline so the payment still reconciles. The full history of every charge is on the Charge screen.
• A charge's date on the timeline is its due date; hover for the exact time.
• Balances in parentheses are amounts the customer owes. The Overdue figure in the footer is always shown in parentheses.
• The arrears section takes its outstanding-since date from this statement, and falls back to the statement's balance as at today for the overdue amount when the contract does not carry one of its own.

Contract versions

When a contract's terms are amended (its amount, frequency or number of payments), the contract is not edited in place: a new contract is created with the new terms, anything still unpaid moves across to it, and the original is closed with its status shown as Updated. See Rules: Amend a contract's terms. for the rules. The result is a chain of contract versions, each with its own reference, statement, comments and audit trail. This section shows that chain as a timeline and answers the question "is this the current version of the agreement, and where did it come from?"

Where it appears

On the Contract screen, directly below the contract header, and only on a contract that has been amended from an earlier version or amended into a newer one. A contract that has never been amended has no versions and shows nothing here.

What it shows

• An introductory line saying which way the chain runs: This contract was amended from a previous contract., This contract was amended to a newer contract., or both when the contract you are on sits in the middle of the chain.
• The timeline itself, one entry per version, oldest at the top, read as follows:

• While the chain is being fetched a loading indicator is shown in its place.
• Below the timeline is the Show full contract chain below switch, which is off each time you open a contract.

What you can do

Things to note

• Switching the full chain on changes what the sections below show, not what is in them: it is a way of reading the whole agreement's history from one screen without opening each version in turn.
• In the full-chain view, comments can only be added under the version you are viewing, and the Comments counter in the section header counts across every version. See Comments.
• In the full-chain view, the Audit section lists every entry for every version in full, so the entries omitted gap and its load-more control do not appear; the counter in its header is the total across all versions.
• The Audit section is only present on a recurring or scheduled contract, and the Comments section only when comments are enabled for your organisation; the switch affects whichever of them are on the screen.
• The collapsed earlier amendments entry cannot be expanded from the timeline. To reach a version it stands for, switch the full chain on and follow that version's reference from the statement, Comments or Audit section, or step through the chain one version at a time. When the version you are viewing is one of those collapsed, no VIEWING mark appears in the timeline.
• Once a contract has been amended into a newer version it is a read-only record: editing, suspending, resuming and terminating are offered on the newest version. Follow the timeline's last link to get there.
• A version's arrears are not shown on a version that has been amended away; any unpaid amount was carried into its successor and is reported there.

Charge details

A charge is one amount a contract asks for on a given date: one instalment of a plan, one month of a subscription, or the single amount of a scheduled payment. This section is the charge's own record. It answers "how much was asked for, when, and where has it got to" — whether it has been paid, is still waiting, is overdue, or has been dropped.

Where it appears

On the Charge screen, below the account and contract headers, and again at the top of the charge's edit form. The edit form carries the one-line header only; the full Charge Details card is on the Charge screen.

What it shows

The section is in two parts: a one-line header, and the Charge Details card.

The header line

• Charge, followed by the amount and due date, e.g. "Charge £25.00 due Sep 12, 2026 09:00". This is the charge in one glance: what was asked for and when it falls due.
• The charge's reference. This is the same reference the contract's statement shows against the charge's line, so you can match the two.
• A status badge, the same one as in the card below.

The Charge Details card

Statuses

Paid, voided and cancelled are final: the badge reports that state whatever the due date says. The other three follow the due date, so an overdue charge becomes unpaid again if its due date is moved into the future.

What you can do

The section itself is read-only. The controls below sit on the Charge screen directly beneath the header line, and only appear on a contract that is in progress and has a schedule (recurring or scheduled).

Things to note

• Edit and Void are shown to Admin users, and only when the matching features are enabled for your organisation. If neither appears on an open charge, that is why.
• No figure for the outstanding amount is shown here. It is Amount less Paid (less Written Off on a voided charge). The contract's arrears and running balance are on the Contract screen.
• Paid, Written Off and Completed are simply absent until they have a value; a card with only Status, Amount, Due and Created is an untouched charge.
• The payments and attempts made against the charge are not listed here. The contract's statement shows them as lines beneath the charge; the charge's audit history, further down the Charge screen, records the changes made to it.
• Dates and times are shown in your local time zone.