When You're Charged: How Your Billing Cycle Works
Explains when your first payment happens, what sets your renewal date, and where to see it in the portal.
When You're Charged: How Your Billing Cycle Works
This article answers the question most people arrive with: when does LobbyFlight actually take money, and which date does it use? The short version is that your subscription starts with a seven-day free trial, the first charge happens when that trial ends, and the day the trial ends becomes the renewal date for every payment after it.
Monthly or yearly, decided when you sign up
You choose your billing interval during sign-up. On the pricing page there is a Monthly / Yearly toggle, and the choice you make there is carried into the registration form, which has the same toggle. Whichever one is selected when you complete checkout becomes the interval of your subscription.
Monthly means a calendar month at a time, and yearly means a calendar year at a time. It is not a rolling thirty-day cycle: if your renewal date is the 15th, the period runs from the 15th of one month to the 15th of the next, whether that month has 28, 30 or 31 days.
The interval cannot be switched later inside the portal. Portal → Billing lets you move between plans, but not between monthly and yearly.
The free trial sets your renewal date
Every checkout starts a seven-day free trial. You enter a card at sign-up, but nothing is charged during those seven days. The first charge is taken when the trial ends, and that is the date everything else follows from — if you register on 8 March, the trial ends and the first payment is taken on 15 March, and every following payment falls on the 15th (or on 15 March of the next year if you chose yearly billing).
Three days before the trial ends, we send an email telling you the exact date it expires, so the first charge is never a surprise.
Because the renewal date comes from the trial end and not from a fixed day of the month, every account has its own date. There is no company-wide 1st-of-the-month run.
One subscription per organisation, not per hotel
If you run more than one property, they do not each have their own cycle. The Stripe subscription belongs to the organisation, and the billing view is resolved through the property that holds it. Every property in the organisation therefore shows the same plan, the same renewal date and the same invoices — one payment covers the group. See Organisation and Properties for how properties are grouped.
Where to see your renewal date
Open Portal → Billing. Underneath the price and plan status you will find a single line, "Renews on {date}", showing the end of your current period. That is your next payment date. The line is hidden when your subscription is already set to cancel, because in that case a warning banner at the top of the page tells you the date it will end instead.
Your dashboard also mentions it, but only when it is close: the list of things that need your attention shows a note when the period ends within the next seven days, and a critical entry if a payment has failed. Both link straight to the billing page.
The Manage Subscription button at the top of the billing page opens the Stripe customer portal, where the card on file and the cancellation are handled.
What you actually get billed
The base amount is your plan price: Basic is €69 per month, Pro is €149 and Premium is €199. Yearly billing costs ten times the monthly price — two months free — so €690, €1,490 and €1,990 a year, saving €138, €298 and €398 respectively. Plan Comparison covers what each plan includes.
Two things can change the amount on a given invoice:
If you enter a promotion code at checkout, it changes the amount of the first invoice. Some codes are restricted — WELCOME25, for example, applies to monthly subscriptions only, and is ignored if you pick yearly billing.
VAT and your billing address
A billing address is required at checkout, because tax is calculated by Stripe Automatic Tax based on the country you are billed in. There is no single flat rate that applies to everyone. If you are a business with a VAT ID, you can enter it during checkout, and it is applied to your invoices.
Invoices and receipts
The billing page has a Payment History table listing payments that have already been taken, with the date, the invoice number as Stripe issued it, the amount, the status, a link to the invoice in Stripe and a PDF download. There is no preview of a future invoice in the portal — for that, open the Stripe customer portal through Manage Subscription.
After each successful payment you receive a receipt by email containing the amount, the plan, the period it covers and a link back to your billing history. If a payment fails, you get an email about it immediately and your subscription status changes to *past due* in the portal. There is no reminder email in the days before a charge; the dashboard note within the last seven days of the period is the advance warning. Payment Failures explains what to do when a charge is declined.
These emails are not optional and there is no notification setting for them, because each one is tied to something that actually happened to your money.
Changing plans mid-cycle
Upgrades and downgrades take effect immediately and are prorated by Stripe against the time left in your current period, so you pay or are credited the difference straight away rather than waiting for the renewal date. Your renewal date itself does not move.
A downgrade behaves the same way on the invoice, but be aware that the limits change immediately as well: display count, branding level, languages, weather and analytics are lowered across every property in the organisation as soon as the change goes through, not at the end of the period. Upgrade or Downgrade Your Plan walks through this.
Can you move the billing date?
No. We do not offer a way to shift the renewal date — it is set once by the end of your trial and there is no control in the portal or in support tooling that moves it.
The only way to end up with a different date is to cancel and register again, and it is rarely worth it. A new registration starts a new seven-day trial, so the new renewal date is seven days after you sign up again, not the day you sign up. You would also lose the gap in service between the cancellation and the new subscription, and you would be setting the account up from scratch. Cancelling is done in the Stripe customer portal and takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for; see Cancel Subscription.
Complimentary accounts
Accounts on complimentary access have no billing cycle at all. Their billing page shows the features they have and nothing else — no renewal date, no payment history, and no invoices are generated.
Next steps
Support
If something about your cycle or an invoice does not add up, write to info@lobbyflight.com or call +43 650 753 1811. The full help centre is available inside the portal under Portal → Help.