How do I require upfront payment from a customer?

When you create an invoice, you can request payment by any date that suits your schedule. This means that you can easily require upfront payment for specific (or all!) notices and customers.

When upfront payment is required for a notice, the customer must submit payment before the advertising deadline for the first publication date. 

Go to My Organization > Customers and click on the customer in the table. Click "Edit" from here and then scroll to the customer preferences section. Select "Always require" in the dropdown labeled "Require upfront payment?" Once this setting is turned on, upfront payment will always be required when this customer places a notice. However, you can still turn off upfront payment when creating a specific invoice.

Go to My Organization > Customers > Organizations and click on the organization in the table. Click "Edit," then scroll down to the organization preferences section. In the dropdown button labeled "Require upfront payment?" select "Always require." Once this setting is turned on, upfront payment will always be required when this organization places a notice. 

Note: Upfront payment settings on individual customers override settings on customer organizations. If you want to require upfront payment for all members of an organization, set "Always require" on the organization. If one member of an organization doesn't require upfront payment, set "Never require" on that individual customer.

If you want to default to requiring upfront payment, you can enable upfront payment in Billing settings. If you turn on upfront payment here, settings on customers and customer organizations will override this default setting. (If you turn on upfront payment in Billing, but Jane Doe is set not to require upfront payment, then Jane's invoices will not require upfront payment.)

You can select "Require upfront payment" while creating the invoice to require upfront payment on a specific notice. Click the toggle on, and payment will be requested before the advertising deadline for that particular notice. This feature makes it easy to decide whether to publish a notice when you gather the notices for publication day.

You can also click the date next to "Invoice Due Date" to select a specific due date for the invoice.

When you submit an invoice requiring upfront payment, your customer will receive an email notifying them that the invoice must be paid by the specified date.

On your home page table, you will see a warning for unpaid notices requiring upfront payment. You can view invoice due dates by clicking on a particular notice and viewing the notice details page. Customers also see these warnings when they login to Column.

Customers will need time to pay their notices, but we allow you to make the judgment call!

Please note that toggling the upfront payment requirement sets the invoice due date to the ad deadline for the first publication date. If the date has already passed, you cannot toggle the upfront payment requirement when creating the invoice.

If you have set up notices to auto-cancel if they are unpaid by the deadline, the customer will receive an email notification that their notice has been canceled. If they have already mailed a check, our team will check their account to see if a new notice was scheduled and apply the check funds to the new invoice. If the notice hasn't been replaced, we will refund the payment.

If you do not auto-cancel by the deadline, the check will be reconciled to the invoice as long as it remains active. We strongly recommend canceling notices you don't intend to publish if payment isn't received by the deadline to prevent customers from paying for a notice that was not published.

If you allow customers to pay by check for these notices or miss their payment deadline, you should ensure the upfront payment requirement is toggled off or void the invoice and issue a new one due Net 30.

You can send a reminder to the customer by clicking on the notice and clicking "Send Reminder."

This is up to you! Some publishers may still publish the notice, while others may not. If you do not want to publish an unpaid notice, we recommend canceling the notice. You can set up your newspaper to automatically cancel unpaid notices at the deadline.

If you decide to publish the notice without an upfront payment, please toggle off the upfront payment requirement at the top of the Notice Detail page. When the upfront payment requirement is toggled on, the payment link becomes inactive once the deadline has passed. To make it easier for your customers who missed the deadline, toggle off the upfront payment requirement and send them an invoice reminder to prompt them to pay.