Billing Automation
Conductly can run your billing for you: it creates invoices on your schedule, emails them to families a few days ahead of time, and charges saved cards on the day you choose. This page explains what happens, when it happens, and which settings control it.
Billing automation is available to every school, but it starts off. Everything on this page is controlled from the automation panels at the bottom of Settings → Invoices — turn on what you want, when you want. Until you do, invoicing works exactly as described in Creating Invoices and Sending Invoices — you create, send, and charge yourself.
The big picture
Think of automation as two workers who each make one pass every day:
- The Invoice Creator — writes up new invoices when it's time.
- The Bill Collector — emails those invoices to families and charges saved cards when the day arrives.
They're deliberately separate: the Creator never touches money, and the Collector never decides what a family owes. Both run automatically once a day.
Part 1: The Invoice Creator
The Creator makes invoices in two situations.
Recurring invoices (monthly, quarterly, or semester billing)
If you've turned on Auto-generate recurring invoices, then each billing period Conductly builds an invoice for every enrolled student, based on their lessons and rates — the same invoice you'd get by creating it yourself from the Create Invoice drawer.
You control the timing in Settings → Invoices:
- Billing Period — Monthly, Quarterly, or Semester.
- Billing Start Day — the day of the month your billing cycle begins (for most schools, the 1st).
- Generate invoices days ahead — how many days before the period starts the invoices are created. This is your review window (more on that below).
Lesson pack renewals
Lesson packs (e.g., "10 lessons for $500") don't follow the calendar — they renew based on usage. Each day, Conductly checks every active pack and counts how many lessons are left. When a pack drops to your renewal threshold (Renew when lessons remain), one of two things happens, depending on your When a pack runs low setting:
- Auto-bill the next pack — Conductly immediately creates the invoice for the next pack.
- Flag staff to renew (the default) — Conductly notifies your staff that the pack is running low, and a staff member clicks Renew pack when ready.
Every new invoice starts as a Draft
No matter how it was created, an automatic invoice starts life as a Draft. Drafts are only visible to your staff — families cannot see them, and nothing can be charged yet. Check the Recent activity panel any time to confirm a batch was created.
The draft stage is your safety window: you can open any invoice, adjust it, add a discount, or delete it entirely before a family ever sees it. If everything looks right, you don't have to do anything — the Bill Collector takes it from there. See Invoice Statuses for what each status means.
Part 2: The Bill Collector
Every day, the Collector looks at each automatic invoice and asks two questions, using dates you control in Settings → Invoices.
"Is it time to send this invoice?"
Every invoice has a due date (the billing start day plus your Payment due days setting). A set number of days before the due date — your Send invoices (days before due) setting — the invoice is sent: it moves to Waiting for payment, the family receives it by email, and it appears in their Family Portal. The email a family gets depends on whether they have a card on file:
- Card on file — a payment notice: "your saved payment method will be charged on [the charge day]," including the exact amount (with any card fee).
- No card on file — the invoice with a payment link — one click to view and pay online, no sign-in needed.
Each day's send is logged in Recent activity, including how many went out.
Example: due on the 1st, send 3 days ahead → families get their invoice email on the 29th.
"Is it time to charge this invoice?"
If your collection mode is Send & charge automatically, then on the charge day — the due date, or a set number of days after it (Charge cards (days after due)) if you prefer a grace period — Conductly charges the family's saved default card for the invoice balance.
Rules the Collector always follows:
- It never charges an invoice the family hasn't received. Sending always comes first: by the time a card is charged, the family has had the invoice email — and if they have a card on file, that email named the charge date and the exact amount.
- No saved card? No problem. The family still gets the invoice email with a payment link and can pay online, or in person.
- It charges exactly once. If a card is declined, Conductly does not silently retry day after day. The invoice stays unpaid, the normal overdue flow takes over, and your staff is notified through the regular overdue-invoice notifications so a human can follow up.
- It never touches finished invoices. Paid, voided, or refunded invoices are left alone. If a family already paid part of an invoice, only the remaining balance is charged.
Recent activity
Once Auto-generate recurring invoices is on, a Recent activity panel appears at the bottom of Settings → Invoices, below the automation controls. It lists the last 5 automation runs — each labeled Invoices generated (the Creator) or Invoices sent & charged (the Collector) — with how many invoices were created, sent, charged, or failed that run, plus the date of the next scheduled generation. Check it any time you want to confirm a run happened and what it did; automation runs don't send a separate staff notification the way a manually created or sent invoice might.
The controls
Two settings in Settings → Invoices control the Collector:
- Auto-generate recurring invoices (on/off) — whether the Creator builds draft invoices each billing period.
- Collection mode — what the Bill Collector does with them:
| Collection mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Off — collect manually | Your staff sends invoices and charges cards by hand |
| Send invoices automatically | Invoices are emailed to families on their send day; your staff charges cards |
| Send & charge automatically | Invoices are emailed on their send day, then saved cards are charged on the charge day |
You can mix these however you like. Some schools generate drafts automatically but collect by hand; others let everything run and only step in when notified.
A month in the life (example)
A school bills Monthly, period starting the 1st, creates invoices 5 days early, invoices due on the 1st, sends 3 days before due, and charges on the due date. Auto-generate is on and collection mode is Send & charge automatically. Here's February's tuition:
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| Jan 27 | Invoice Creator builds draft invoices for February, logged in Recent activity as an "Invoices generated" run. |
| Jan 27–28 | Review window — staff can adjust or delete any draft. Families see nothing yet. |
| Jan 29 | Bill Collector sends the invoices. Card-on-file families get a "your card will be charged Feb 1" notice; everyone else gets the invoice with a payment link. Logged in Recent activity as an "Invoices sent & charged" run. |
| Feb 1 | Bill Collector charges every family with a saved card, logged in Recent activity as another "Invoices sent & charged" run with that day's totals. |
| Feb 1+ | Families without a saved card (or with a declined card) still have their open invoice, and Payment Reminders take over. |
Meanwhile, if a student's 10-lesson pack hits its renewal threshold on, say, Feb 12, its renewal invoice is created that day and rides the exact same send-then-charge rails, on its own due date — no waiting for March.
Common questions
Can I look over invoices before families see them? Yes — that's exactly what the Generate invoices days ahead setting is for. Invoices sit as staff-only drafts from the day they're created until their send day.
Will a family ever be charged without warning? No. In Send & charge automatically mode the invoice email always goes out first, on the send day — and for card-on-file families it names the charge date and the exact amount. Conductly never charges a family for an invoice they haven't received.
What happens when a card is declined? The charge is attempted once. The invoice stays unpaid, your staff is notified, and the overdue flow (including Payment Reminders, if enabled) goes to work. Staff can retry the card manually, or the family can pay from the emailed link or their portal. See Payments for how card charges and retries work.
Does this affect invoices my staff creates by hand? No. Automatic sending and charging apply only to invoices the system created. Manually created invoices are sent and charged by your staff, as always — see Sending Invoices.
What if a family has no card on file? Their invoice is still created and emailed on schedule with a payment link; they just pay themselves — online, or however you normally accept payment.