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 does all of it, but the pieces live on three different screens, so this page walks the whole 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.

What you are building

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.

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.

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.