Final Payment Workflow

Most advisors want the same thing: take a deposit, keep the card on file, then have the client authorize the balance shortly before final payment is due, without anyone chasing anyone. JourneyFuse can organize the reminders and authorization requests. The advisor still processes the authorized card payment with the supplier and records the result; a signed authorization does not charge the card. The pieces live on three different screens, so this page walks the flow in order.

The one wrong turn. In Automations there is a step called Send Shared Card Link. It is not the step that asks a client to authorize their balance. It forwards a shared link you have already published on a trip, and it never works out an amount (what every automation action does). If you are chasing one client for a deposit or a final payment, that request comes from the invoice, not from an automation. Everything below uses the invoice.

Nothing is payable while the invoice is a draft. A draft invoice cannot be paid until you open or send it. On the trip's Payments tab, Open for payment makes it payable from your client's trip with no email; Send Invoice does the same and emails it.

What you are building

The quick way: let JourneyFuse draft the plan

On a trip that has priced bookings and no invoice yet, the Payments tab opens with Set up what [client] pays. It lists the bookings it will collect for (a booking the client pays the supplier for directly is left out), drafts a deposit that covers the suppliers' own deposits and a final payment due 14 days before the earliest supplier final date, and shows why each date was chosen. Change any date or amount, add an installment, or split the final over three months; the card tells you when the plan adds up. Send the plan builds the invoice from the bookings, puts the schedule on it, opens it for payment and emails the client in one step. Underneath are the other paths: record money you already have, open for payment without emailing, or build the invoice by hand.

Step 1: Take the deposit, keep the card

Send the first card authorization as usual, and tick Keep card on file until I remove it. That keeps the encrypted card available for the whole trip instead of destroying it a week after the trip ends. Card Authorizations is the full reference for statuses, terms and chargeback evidence.

Keeping the card does not authorize any future charge on its own. Every payment you plan to run still gets its own signed authorization, which is what gives each one its own receipt, timestamp and IP address if a charge is ever disputed. That is the point of the rest of this page: you do not have to chase that second signature yourself.

Step 2: Build the invoice with a deposit and a balance

Open the trip, open its invoice, and find the Payment Schedule card.

• If you took an upfront amount, turn on Deposit above the schedule. The balance then follows the schedule below it.
• Otherwise click Split Payments and create the rows you want. If the party is dividing one invoice between travelers, see Split Payments & Traveler Shares instead.

You need an actual payment row for the balance. The authorization in the next step is created from that row, so without one there is nothing for JourneyFuse to ask the client to sign.

Your client's date and the supplier's date

Many advisors give clients an earlier deadline than the supplier's. A trip keeps both. The supplier's final payment date comes from the booking or the confirmation import. Your client's date is the due date on the balance row in the Payment Schedule, and you can set it to whatever you like.

When the two differ, the trip's Overview → Payments & dates shows both: Supplier final payment and Client payment due. Invoice payment reminders and the card authorization request below follow the client date. Automation steps timed from Final payment due follow the supplier's date, so set their days to match your own margin.

Several bookings, several final payment dates

A back-to-back cruise, or a trip with a separate cruise, hotel and tour, often has a different supplier final payment date for each booking. If you have entered a final payment date on each booking, you do not need to type them again.

When an invoice bills two or more bookings that have final payment dates, the Payment Schedule card shows Add booking due dates. One click adds a pending Final Payment row for each booking. Each row has:

• that booking's final payment date as its due date
• what is left on that booking as its amount (the same Remaining figure your client sees under "What each payment went toward")
• a note naming the booking, for example Royal Caribbean · Interior Stateroom · departs Jan 10, 2027 · #9088273. Your client sees that note next to the date.

Your client's invoice then lists each dated payment under Payment Schedule. Every row is an ordinary payment you can edit or delete afterwards. Later changes to a booking's date do not move the row.

A few things to know:

• Money already paid toward the whole trip counts. A deposit that was not recorded against one booking comes off the earliest rows first, so the schedule never asks for more than the balance.
• Bookings you already scheduled are skipped. A booking that has an unpaid payment tied to it keeps that payment.
• The button is hidden while an unpaid whole-trip payment exists (a single "Final balance" row, for example). That row already asks for the same money. Delete it first if you want one row per booking instead.
• Adding one row by hand? Click Add Payment and change "Whole trip" to the booking. If the due date is still empty, it fills in with that booking's final payment date, so you do not need to look it up. Deposits and paid rows are left alone.

Step 3: Turn on the automatic authorization request

Still in Payment Schedule, click Split Payments, then tick Auto-send card authorization requests and choose how many days before each due date the request goes out. The options are 3, 5, 7, 10 and 14.

A preview appears listing exactly which dates the emails will go out on, so you can check the timing before you commit.

It is one date, not two. The setting sends one authorization per payment, that many days before that payment's own due date. If you want notices at both 10 and 3 days, pick 10 here and make the 3 day notice a plain reminder email in Step 4. A client only needs to sign once.

Two more things worth knowing:

• You tick this box when you build the schedule, not when you send the invoice.
• Terms for this trip sits just underneath. Anything you type there appears above the standard authorization statement on the form itself, which is where a supplier's cancellation policy needs to be if your suppliers require it.

Step 4: Add your reminder emails

The authorization request and your own reminder emails are separate things, and they are meant to be.

Open Automations, then Every trip, and look under From a payment. Add or edit a step with your own email on it. A step is either an email or a card link, never both, so your reminders stay ordinary emails and the signing link arrives on its own from Step 3.

If a step shows needs an email, nothing goes out from it until you pick one.

Step 5: Collect

On the day, the client gets the request and signs from the email or from the pending authorization card in their portal. You get notified, reveal the card, run it at the supplier, then click Mark as Charged on the trip's Payments tab.

Clients cannot start a new authorization from the portal on their own. If a link has expired they can ask for a fresh one from the expired page, which notifies you rather than minting a link by itself.

Change a date or amount without opening the dialog

On the trip's Payments tab, every installment that is still due can be edited where it sits. Click the date to pick a new one, or click the amount and type; Enter saves and Esc cancels. A typed "$1,250" saves as 1,250. If an amount changes, the final payment is recalculated so the schedule still adds up to the invoice. Paid, refunded and covered rows keep their ⋯ menu only.

Under the table, Add puts a new installment on the invoice from one line: pick Installment, Deposit or Final payment, set the date and amount, and press Enter. Two rows of the same type on the same date are not allowed, and the table says so.

Timeline is the Payments tab's default view: every payment on the trip in date order, whichever invoice it sits on, with a column for when it is due, what it is, how the client was asked, how it was paid, and the amount. The invoice is a label on the row; the heading says which invoice the plan was sent as, with a View link, and Invoices (n) at the bottom lists them. Collect holds the ways to ask: send the plan, request the next payment, request a card, mark the next payment paid, or record money received. A row's own ⋯ asks for just that payment. Invoices switches to the invoice cards you had before; nothing on them has changed.

By booking (the toggle above the schedule) shows the same rows grouped under the booking each one settles, with the supplier's own deposit and final dates beside the client's plan. A row whose invoice bills only one booking is grouped there automatically and marked "from the invoice"; rows no booking can claim sit under Whole trip. A booking the client pays the supplier for directly says so and shows nothing to collect. An amber line under a booking means the supplier wants money before the client's last planned payment, or before anything is planned at all. Each band has its own Add line; a row added there is tagged to that booking and lands on the invoice the band already uses, or on the trip's one open invoice, or is kept off any invoice until you send one.

The tiles at the top lead with Next due, the earliest unpaid installment and its date. It turns red and reads Overdue since when that date has passed.

The amount is always current

The request states what is owed on the day it is sent, not what was owed when you built the schedule. If the client pays something in between, the balance row shrinks and both the emailed figure and the authorization form follow it down.

Partial payments

You usually do not need a second authorization for these.

The amount a client signs is a ceiling, not a single charge. You can charge against it more than once until it is used up, and JourneyFuse tracks the running total against what they agreed to. So a client who wants to pay half now and half later is covered by the authorization you already hold.

You only need to send a new request when the total would go above what they authorized. For that, either add the extra payment to the schedule, or go to Invoices & Cards → Card Authorizations and click Request Card Authorization for a one-off.

When something has not gone out

• An automation step is sitting on needs attention. If it is a Send Shared Card Link step, check the wrong turn at the top of this page. That step pauses on every trip that has no published shared link, which is most trips.
• No authorization was created. The invoice needs to be linked to a trip, the client needs an email address, and there has to be a pending payment row for the authorization to be built from.
• The client already paid. Requests are re-checked on the morning they are due to go out and are skipped automatically if the payment has settled or the client has already authorized, so nobody is asked to sign for something they have handled.