Charges and payments explained
Transaction history is easiest to understand when you separate charges from payments.
Charges
A charge is money added to an account balance.
You will usually see a charge when Cadence Calendar creates a billing record for:
- a lesson
- an event
- a one-time fee
- a recurring charge that has been generated
Charges are how the system records what is owed.
Payments
A payment is money received from a family or account holder.
Payments reduce what is owed and help bring the account balance back down.
Payments can be:
- entered manually
- paid online through an invoice or account payment page
- collected automatically through Auto-Pay
How recurring charges fit in
Recurring charges are not a special payment type.
They are charge templates that generate charge rows over time.
That means:
- a finite recurring charge stops on its end date
- an indefinite recurring charge keeps going until you pause or delete it
- future recurring charges may not appear in history until they have been generated
How Auto-Pay fits in
Auto-Pay is different from recurring charges.
Auto-Pay creates recurring monthly payments through Stripe.
So if a family is on Auto-Pay:
- the charge still comes from your billing workflow
- the payment comes from Stripe when the subscription is collected
- the payment reduces the balance once Stripe confirms it
How they work together
A typical billing flow looks like this:
- Cadence Calendar records a charge.
- The account now shows money owed.
- A family pays online, Auto-Pay collects a payment, or another payment is recorded.
- The payment is added to the account history.
- The balance becomes easier to reconcile against the invoice or account total.
Why this matters
If you are trying to understand why an account balance changed, charges and payments are the first two records to check.
- A charge increases what is owed.
- A payment decreases what is owed.
- Recurring charges explain why a balance may keep changing on a schedule.
- Auto-Pay explains why payments may appear without manual entry.
Related pages
- View transaction history
- Invoices and payment history
- How families pay online
- Recurring Charges
- Auto-Pay
