Date-based payment plans are new type of plan in Paythen that let you collect payments from all customers on the plan on the same dates. With standard payment plans, each customer that signs up is charged on different dates based on when they signed up and at a specific billing interval – weekly, monthly, etc.

Date-based plans don't have any standard billing interval – they are tied to specific dates in the future. And you can set a different amount for each date too. For example, if you're selling a workshop that starts on 10 Feb 2024 and costs $10,000, you could collect payments like this:

Everyone signing up will get charged those same amounts on the same dates. You can set any dates and amounts that suit you. Here's a working demo you can sign up to. And here is an example of a customer on a date-based payment plan.

To get started, click on the green + icon in your Paythen dashboard menu.
Choose the Date-based payment plan option in the plan selection screen:

You'll see the plan creation screen just like other payment plans, with a key difference – you'll now see fields to choose "Payment Milestone dates and amounts":

You can add as many payment milestone dates as you need. These can be any date in the future. You can optionally add a "Charge on sign up" which gets collected immediately when a customer signs up – this lets you collect a deposit upfront immediately and isn't tied to a specific date.

You can optionally choose to have payment plan terms customers need to agree to when they sign up. We provide default wording for the terms but strongly recommend customizing them to suit your business and your policies around cancellations, refunds and any other fees (like late fees in case of failed payments).

You can choose to add optional or required custom fields just like any other plans – these can be a mobile field or a text field.

Once you create a plan, you will get a unique plan link, just like you do for existing plans. You can share this with customers. Once a customer signs up, they will automatically get charged the relevant milestone amount on each milestone date.

When a customer signs up, they will get an email with their payment dates and amounts, just like for existing payment plans. This will include a link to their customer summary page (like this example) where they can view their dates, payment receipts and change their payment information.

Once customers sign up to a plan, their payments are automatically charged by Paythen – with no manual action required from you. Their status will update to Completed once they complete all payments.

Date-based templates work like standard payment plan templates: each customer can have a different total, and you share one template link or use it with our WooCommerce plugin. The difference is that instead of choosing a billing interval, you choose how the payment dates are set. Under "How should payment dates be set?" there are two options.

Choose the dates all customers are charged on, and give each date a percentage. Customers with different totals are still charged on the same dates. For example:

25 October - 25%

15 November - 25%

12 December - 20%

14 January - 30%

You can add an optional sign up charge as a percentage too. The milestone amounts adjust automatically depending on how you've set up the sign up charge, if there is one.

Fixed dates suit anything everyone is working towards together, like a trip, a retreat or a course start date.

Choose a day of the month and a number of monthly payments. Each customer's dates are worked out when they open the template link, so plans created from this template always have dates in the future, and you never need to update its dates.

For example, with the 15th:

A monthly payment is never taken on the day the customer signs up, so anyone signing up on or after your chosen day starts the following month.

As you fill in the form, an example schedule shows what a customer signing up today would pay and when.

Once a customer signs up, their plan has fixed dates like any other date-based plan, so their customer page, emails, early payments and failed payment retries all work the same way. Editing the template later only affects customers who sign up after the change.

Same day each month suits ongoing sales where customers sign up at any time but you want payments to land on a predictable day, like the 1st or the 15th.