Charge everyone on the same day each month with date-based tempaltes

16 October 2026

Date-based templates: bill on the same day each month

Date-based plan templates now have a second way to set payment dates. Instead of picking fixed and pre-set calendar dates, you can choose a day of the month – say the 15th – and a total number of payments. Each customer is then charged on the 15th of every month, starting from when they sign up, plus an optional sign up fee.

Because each customer’s dates are calculated automatically when they check out, plans created this way always have payment dates in the future. With fixed pre-set dates, customers signing up after any date had passed had to pay a larger lump-sum on sign up to catch up. If what you’re selling doesn’t have a hard cut off date, this new approach can work well. For plans where everyone must complete payments by a specific date, the existing date-based or Flexipay setup continues to work well.

How it works

When you create or edit a date-based template, choose Same day each month under “How should payment dates be set?”, then set:

Which day of the month — any day from the 1st to the 31st. If you pick the 29th, 30th or 31st, shorter months use their last day, and the following month goes back to your chosen day.
Number of monthly payments — the total is split evenly between them, to the cent, so the payments always add up to the exact total.
When the first payment is — for customers who sign up before your chosen day, start their payments in the same month or wait until the following month. Eg: with the 15th, a customer signing up on 9 October first pays on 15 October with “Start in the same month”, or on 15 November with “Start from the following month”. Anyone signing up on or after the 15th starts the following month either way.

You can still add a one-time upfront fee, like a deposit or setup fee, which is charged at sign up – either on top of the total or deducted from it. As you fill in the details, an example schedule shows exactly what a customer signing up today would pay and when.

Fixed dates or same day each month? Which is right for me?

Fixed dates are still the best fit when everyone is working towards the same date – a trip, a retreat or a course start – and you want every customer paid up by a specific date in the future.

Same day each month suits ongoing sales where customers sign up at any time, but you want payments being charged on a predictable day every month regardless of when someone signs up.

This is only available for date-based plans created via templates at the moment. This will roll out to date-based plans created directly via the dashboard in the future too. As always, we’d love to hear what you think. If you have questions or feedback, reach out via the chat icon 💬

👉 Create a date-based template in your dashboard
👉 Date-based payment plans guide

Try it free for 7 days.
No credit card required, ever.

We’ll ask you to connect your Stripe account or create a new one once you sign up. Paythen works with Stripe.

stripe

Payment Pages

When you create or edit a date-based template, choose Same day each month under “How should payment dates be set?”, then set:

Which day of the month — any day from the 1st to the 31st. If you pick the 29th, 30th or 31st, shorter months use their last day, and the following month goes back to your chosen day.
Number of monthly payments — the total is split evenly between them, to the cent, so the payments always add up to the exact total.
When the first payment is — for customers who sign up before your chosen day, start their payments in the same month or wait until the following month. Eg: with the 15th, a customer signing up on 9 October first pays on 15 October with “Start in the same month”, or on 15 November with “Start from the following month”. Anyone signing up on or after the 15th starts the following month either way.

paythen-same-day-each-month-preview

Fixed dates are still the best fit when everyone is working towards the same date – a trip, a retreat or a course start – and you want every customer paid up by a specific date in the future.

Same day each month suits ongoing sales where customers sign up at any time, but you want payments being charged on a predictable day every month regardless of when someone signs up.

👉 Create a date-based template in your dashboard
👉 Date-based payment plans guide

Admin

Paythen now has a one-click test mode toggle – you can switch to this anytime to try out new plan types, understand how a new discount would work, test new templates and understand customer progression first-hand. You get real emails in test mode from simulated events – just like your customers would. Use test mode to fast-forward payment plans, get customer-facing emails, simulate what happens when a payment fails, and test new things without any live payments.

To try test mode, just flip the switch next to the Paythen logo. A yellow “You’re in test mode” label stays on while you’re in it so there’s never any doubt about which data you’re looking at. Flip it back and you’re in live mode exactly where you left off. The first time you or someone on your team toggles on test mode, we’ll add some sample test mode data you can check out. Create more by signing up to a test plan yourself. Wipe it with one-click whenever you want.

Build and refine new plans — payment plans, Pay your way, date-based, Wait for it, Flexipay, subscriptions and one-off payments, plus templates and discount codes.

See exactly what customers see — open any test plan link and go through the full checkout with simulated card fields. No real card is saved or charged. Use a real working email to ensure you get the same emails customers would. You can toggle your admin email settings for test mode separate to your live mode settings too.

Simulate what happens next — test plans don’t advance on their own, so each test customer’s page has controls to simulate the next payment, a failed payment, or send the upcoming payment reminder.

Get the real emails — sign up with a working email and the customer and admin emails land in your inbox, clearly marked as test-mode emails. Email settings in test mode are separate, so you can switch them on or off without affecting live.

Copy between modes — move plans, templates and discounts from test to live once you’re happy, or bring a live plan into test to try a change. Each copy is a new, isolated object and not synced between modes in real time to avoid accidental changes. Copy back and forth as often as needed.

Start fresh any time — add a set of sample customers, plans, templates and discounts in various statuses, or wipe all test data with one click via Settings › Account info. Live data is never touched when you do this.

Test test mode templates with WooCommerce — If you’re using our WooCommerce plugin, you can use a test-mode template link to check the full store-to-payment-plan flow before going live – this gives you a full picture of what your customers will see using your exact plan setup and configuration. Don’t forget to change this to a live template link once you’re done testing!

A few things to know

Test mode doesn’t currently work with Zapier and creates no data in your Stripe account. Early access features like Offers and our Rewardful integration aren’t available in test mode yet. If you need to test a full workflow involving Zapier or Stripe data, use a separate Paythen demo account connected to a Stripe sandbox.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think. If you have questions or feedback, reach out via the chat icon 💬

👉 Try test mode in your dashboard now
👉 Testing in Paythen guide
👉 Understand demo accounts (vs. test mode)

Payment Pages

If you’ve ever wanted to give your customers more say in how they pay — without losing control over key aspects, Flexipay offers exactly that. It’s our most flexible plan type, and it puts the power of choice in your customers’ hands, within the rules you set. This helps you attract and sell to more customers.

Flexipay plans let each of your customers design their own payment schedule when they check out. You define the rules — the minimum deposit, the completion timeframe or date, and whether to allow customers to pay in full — and each customer picks what suits them. No two customers need to be on the same schedule. One might pay weekly over 3 months, another monthly over 6 — all from the single plan link you create. 🙌

Try a live Flexipay demo here to see exactly what your customers experience.

Flexibility for your customers doesn’t mean ambiguity for you. As the business owner, you set the key parameters like:

Minimum payment — what customers need to pay upfront – $100, 10%, etc.
Completion timeframe or date — all payments must be completed within a specific timeframe from sign up (eg: 12 months) or a specified date (eg: 28 January 2027)
Allow pay-in-full — decide whether you want to offer the option to pay in full
Pay-in-full discount — optionally reward customers who pay the full amount upfront

Flexipay also supports ecommerce and other scenarios where each customer has a varying total via templates. This lets you bring the power of Flexipay plans to any workflow you have including WooCommerce, Shopify and almost anything else via Zapier.

Flexipay is a great fit for businesses where customers have varying budgets or cash flow preferences — and where a one-size-fits-all plan isn’t ideal. Some examples include:

🎓 Coaches & course creators — let students choose a deposit and pace that suits their cashflow

📸 Photographers & creatives — offer payment flexibility without lengthy back-and-forth on custom plans

🏋️ Fitness & wellness — training packages and retreats where clients have different financial rhythms

🎪 Events & experiences — sell tickets or packages months in advance and let customers spread the cost their way, while having a hard completion date for everyone x days before the event

🛠️ Service businesses — take on clients who need flexibility without abandoning your payment terms

If you currently use our Pay Your Way plans for flexibility, Flexipay takes that further — giving customers true control over their own schedule, not just a choice between two fixed options. Talk to us about migrating your existing Pay your way plans to Flexipay if this suits your needs better.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think. If you have questions or feedback, reach out via the chat icon 💬

👉 Try the Flexipay demo
👉 Flexipay setup instructions

Zapier

If you use Paythen with your ecommerce store either via the email based flow (eg: for Shopify) or our plugin (like WooCommerce), the flow typically involves customers completing the checkout with the payment plan option chosen, and then either being shown or emailed their payment plan link.

For WooCommerce, the order status automatically changes if they complete their payment plan payment, but for email based workflows like Shopify, Webflow, Eventbrite and any others, once a customer is emailed their payment plan link, you had to manually check if they had paid by logging into the Paythen dashboard, and then manually following up.

You can now fully automate this process with our new Find Customer action available in Zapier. In your zap where you send customers the Paythen payment plan link, just add a short delay after the current flow (eg: wait for 10 minutes) and then use the Find Customer action to check if the customer exists in Paythen. If they do, you can update your eCommerce store order – eg: adding a note and/or tag in Shopify and passing the customer’s Paythen link for reference or in other platforms, you can update the status of the order directly too.

If the customer doesn’t exist, this means they haven’t signed up to their payment plan yet – you can set it up in Zapier to send them a reminder with custom text in it and include the payment plan link again. You can then continue to do this multiple times for a few hours or even a few days after the order was placed, and cancel the order and more as needed if the customer doesn’t pay eventually.

The same setup works when you’re using Paythen with any third party form tool, or any other custom workflows where you show / email them the payment plan link. You can now just add a short delay, then check if they have paid and exist as a customer in Paythen, and if not, trigger one or more reminders and take further steps as needed.

This process required manual admin till now – but can now be fully automated, saving you time. To get started, open your Zapier account and in the action step, choose “Find Customer”. You can modify your existing zap by adding a delay after you send the payment plan link, then checking if the customer exists in Paythen, and then either updating the order in your eCommerce platform or other system (find order and add a note in Shopify for example), or if not found, you can then trigger another reminder email with custom text. You can then set up further steps to check again, say in 1 hour, 4 hours, 2 days, etc to continue automated follow-ups as needed.

If you’re not sure how to do this with your workflow, just reach out to us via the chat icon and we’ll help you get set up.

Charge everyone on the same day each month with date-based tempaltes

How it works

Fixed dates or same day each month? Which is right for me?

Try it free for 7 days.No credit card required, ever.

Try it free for 7 days.
No credit card required, ever.