Payments: start here
The orientation page, written for someone who arrived from a search result and is already frustrated.
Start with what you're seeing. Each row of the first table links straight to the article that deals with it.
Something went wrong
| What you are seeing | Go here |
|---|---|
| A payment was declined | Fix a declined payment |
| You want to know what a specific decline message means | Decline reasons, explained |
| You have tried the same card several times and it keeps failing | Why retrying a declined card usually fails |
| You were charged twice | Contact us with both receipt numbers before you dispute either charge with your bank. A dispute freezes the payment while the bank investigates, which makes your refund slower. |
| An invoice looks wrong | Reply to the invoice email before paying. A paid invoice has to be refunded and reissued, which takes longer than a correction. |
Nothing is wrong, you just need to do something
- Pay an invoice. Open the link in your invoice email. You don't need an account, and you shouldn't be asked to create one.
- Change the card on file. Settings → Payment methods → Replace. The change applies to your next invoice, not to one that is already being collected.
- Get a receipt. Every successful payment sends one within a few minutes. If it hasn't arrived, check your spam folder, then the billing email address on the invoice. A typo there sends every receipt somewhere else.
- Change who receives invoices. Settings → Billing contacts. Add the new person before removing the old one, so no invoice arrives with nobody to receive it.
How payments work here, briefly
Knowing this makes the rest of these articles easier to follow.
An invoice becomes payable when it's issued. Before that it's a draft, and a draft can change. After it's issued, the amounts are fixed; a correction is made by canceling the invoice and issuing a new one, not by editing it.
A payment attempt is separate from the invoice. You can attempt payment on one invoice several times, with different cards. The invoice stays open until one attempt succeeds. A failed attempt doesn't cancel the invoice and doesn't mean you owe less.
A declined payment isn't a charge. No money moves. You may still see a pending authorization on your statement for a few days. Your bank releases those on its own schedule and we can't hurry it.
Refunds go back the way the payment came. A card payment is refunded to that card, and a bank transfer to the account it came from. We can't redirect a refund somewhere else, because it travels back along the same path the payment took.
What we will never ask you for
Worth knowing, because payment problems attract people impersonating support.
We will never ask for your full card number, your PIN, your online banking password, or a one-time code from your bank. We will never ask you to move money to a "holding account" to verify it.
If someone contacts you claiming to be us and asks for any of that, it isn't us. Invoices from us are always payable through a link on the invoice itself, never through a new address someone sends you separately.
Still stuck
Have your invoice number ready. It starts with INV- and is at the top of
the invoice.
If you have a decline message, include it word for word. "It said something about funds" and "It said: Do not honor" lead to two very different conversations, and the second one is much shorter.
Building an integration rather than paying an invoice? The Ledger API error reference covers the same decline reasons in the form your code needs to branch on.