Autopay (automatic payment of future invoices)

Last updated: 2026-06-12 Available on Pro and Team — clients of Pro/Team orgs can opt in

Autopay lets one of your customers authorise Duefy to charge their saved card automatically every time you issue them a new invoice — no second tap, no chasing, no reminder sequence. It's especially useful for retainer / subscription work.

How a customer opts in

The next time the customer pays an invoice from a Pro or Team org, they see a checkbox above the Pay button:

☑ Save my card and use it to automatically pay future invoices from {your company name}. You'll get a receipt for every charge and can turn this off at any time.

The box is unchecked by default — enrolling is an explicit opt-in. If they tick it and the payment succeeds, autopay is enabled. If the payment fails, autopay is not enabled — we never enrol a customer whose card didn't actually charge once first.

How a charge happens

About once an hour, Duefy looks for active invoices belonging to autopay-enrolled customers and tries to charge their saved card. The flow is:

1. Customer is autopay-enrolled and has a saved card on file ✓
2. Their invoice is active and the issue date has passed ✓
3. Duefy hasn't tried to charge this same invoice in the last 24h ✓
4. The balance is at or above the card minimum (Stripe won't charge under ~$0.50; tiny residuals are skipped, not treated as a failure) ✓
5. We attempt the charge off-session through Stripe ✓
6. Success: invoice flips to paid, customer gets a receipt email exactly like any other payment.
7. Card declined or needs re-authentication: customer gets an email explaining what the bank said, with two links — "tap to pay now" (to retry from the regular pay page) and "turn off autopay".

If a single invoice fails 3 times in a 7-day window, Duefy will automatically pause that customer's autopay so we stop hitting the card. The customer is emailed about it; from then on, the invoice goes through the normal reminder sequence.

The Autopay Center

Clients → Autopay opens a dashboard of every client touched by autopay, grouped so you can act at a glance:

• Needs attention — recent card failures, authentication requests, or paused autopay. Each row has an Update card button that emails the client a link to pay their open invoice and re-save a fresh card (leaving autopay on re-establishes automatic billing on the next successful payment); Ask all to update card in the section header sends it to everyone in the group at once. It's the safe counterpart to a same-day charge retry — Stripe would no-op a duplicate charge within the day anyway. We won't re-send the same request more than once every 3 days.
• Healthy autopay — enrolled clients with no recent failures. A newly enrolled client that hasn't been charged yet shows Awaiting first charge, and rows show when the next automatic charge will be attempted (the charge job runs hourly).
• Ready to offer — clients with a saved card who haven't opted in yet. Tick the ones you want and Send selected, or Send all ready, to email them an autopay invitation.

The top counters are all clickable: On autopay (everyone enrolled — healthy plus needs-attention) opens the Clients list filtered to enrolled clients, Needs attention and Ready to offer jump to their lists on this page, and Open balance on autopay (what autopay is set to collect across enrolled clients) opens the Invoices list filtered to the outstanding invoices of autopay clients.

You can also spot autopay clients from the main Clients list: an On autopay filter chip narrows the roster, and enrolled clients carry a green Autopay badge next to their name.

How a customer cancels

Every autopay-related email contains a one-tap "Turn off autopay" link. Tapping it instantly disables autopay for that customer. They keep getting reminder emails as normal for any unpaid invoices, but no further automatic charges happen.

How you (the org) cancel

Open the client's detail page (Clients → click the row). Next to the green ✓ Enabled Autopay chip you'll see a Disable button. Clicking it asks for confirmation and disables autopay immediately.

What about reminder emails?

When autopay successfully charges an invoice, the reminder sequence for that invoice is short-circuited — the invoice is already paid, so there's nothing to remind about. Customers on autopay essentially never see reminders unless something goes wrong.

For invoices where autopay can't run (card on file but customer is not enrolled, or some autopay failure happened), reminders go out normally.

Recurring + autopay = the combo

Most orgs that want autopay also want recurring. Set both up like this:

1. Per-customer: the customer opts into autopay once via the pay page checkbox (see above).
2. Per-invoice (recurring): when creating an invoice for the ongoing service, tick Recurring and pick the frequency. Duefy generates the next invoice automatically on schedule.
3. Combined effect: Duefy generates the new invoice → autopay charges it within the hour → customer gets a receipt. Set and forget.

If you stop the recurring schedule (Invoice → Stop recurring), Duefy also cancels any pending child invoices that were already queued up but not yet charged. Anything already paid stays paid.

Privacy & security

• Cards are tokenised through Stripe; Duefy never stores the card number, expiry, or CVV.
• The autopay flag, consent timestamp, and the customer's IP at consent are kept on the client record as evidence of opt-in.
• The one-tap cancel link uses a random 32-character token. Both the link and the org-side Disable button revoke autopay immediately.

Who can use it

• Org plan: Pro or Team. On Solo / trial the autopay cron never charges your invoices, so the full opt-in isn't offered.
• Per customer: they must save a card by paying at least one invoice through Duefy first, then tick the autopay checkbox.

When a Solo client asks for autopay

Even on Solo, a client paying your invoice sees a checkbox: "I'd like to pay future invoices automatically." Ticking it saves their card (for faster checkout) and records the request — it does not start charging (that needs Pro). We then nudge you to upgrade: a count on your Dashboard, an entry in the notifications bell, and a one-time email the first time a client asks.

After you upgrade, those clients already have a card on file, so they appear in the Autopay Center's Ready to offer group with a Requested badge — send them the invite and they're enrolled.