Playbook, fintech app
The document exists, and the charge on it cannot be discussed here
Nothing here is a subscription invoice. A money app bills in fragments: a percentage taken inside a conversion, a fixed charge on one kind of transfer, an account fee that may or may not exist, and a threshold that resets on a date. The customer wants a document showing all of it, usually because somebody else has asked them for one, and the assistant can explain how every charge is constructed without ever seeing a single one.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for billing and invoices holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Most charges are not billed in the ordinary sense at all, they are deducted at the moment of a transaction, so there is no bill to query and the real question is how a figure was arrived at.
- A statement and a tax document are different papers with different purposes, and the person asking is often a bookkeeper who needs the second while the app offers the first prominently.
- A charge inside a conversion has two parts, a published margin and a rate at a moment, and only one of those is ever a fixed fact, which makes the arithmetic publishable and the total unquotable.
- The reason for the request is usually external, an accountant, a landlord or a claim, so a slow route has a consequence that an unread invoice never has.
How it arrives
- where do i download a statement for my accountant
- why was there a fee on that transfer
- can i get a document showing the fees i paid last year
- is there a monthly account fee on this plan
- how is the charge on a currency conversion worked out
- can you put my company tax number on the paperwork
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The fee schedule, written as rules with thresholds attached | Every charge, what triggers it, and any free allowance with the date it resets. A table of prices with no trigger conditions answers almost none of the questions that arrive, because the argument is nearly always about whether a charge applied rather than what it costs. |
|---|---|
| Which documents exist and what each one is for | A statement, a fee summary, a tax document and a confirmation of a single payment are four different things. Say which you produce, what period each covers and where it is downloaded, because the request usually names the wrong one. |
| How a conversion charge is composed | The published margin, whether a fixed element applies, and a plain sentence saying the rate itself moves. This is the closest thing to arithmetic a customer can do for themselves, and it turns an unexpected deduction into an understood one. |
| How business paperwork is amended and who does it | Adding a company tax number, changing an entity name, reissuing for a different period. Every one of these is a person's job, and naming the route stops the request arriving three times in a week. |
The reply
Statements are downloaded in the app and cover a period you choose, and the separate annual fee summary is the one most accountants ask for [1]. A charge on a conversion is made up of a published margin applied to the amount, plus a fixed element on some routes, and the rate itself moves through the day, which is why the schedule gives the margin rather than a total [2]. Adding a company tax number to paperwork is done by the team rather than in the app. I cannot see any charge on your account or tell you what a particular deduction was for, so leave your name, the account email and the date and amount, and somebody will pull it up.
It names both documents because the person asking usually knows only about the wrong one. Explaining the two parts of a conversion charge is the only way to answer honestly without quoting a rate, and it lets the customer check the arithmetic themselves. Asking for a date and an amount means whoever picks it up starts with the line in front of them.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any question about a specific charge, any request for a document to be reissued or amended, and anything needing a figure read off an account.
Reading an actual charge or changing a document needs somebody with access to the account, which I do not have. Leave your name, the email on the account and the date and amount involved, and it will go to the team so they can look at the line rather than the general rule.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never state what a particular deduction on an account was for, or what it was worth.
- Never quote an exchange rate, or a total in a second currency, since the rate is not a fixed fact and quoting it makes it look like one.
- Never say a document has been sent, reissued or amended.
- Never state a tax treatment for a country that your own published material does not cover.
Questions
- Can it confirm whether a fee was charged correctly?
- No, and this is the request that arrives most often. It can set out the rule that would apply and the trigger for it, which lets the customer compare that against their own statement. Whether the rule was applied properly to their transaction needs somebody who can open the account.
- Our fee schedule is a table. Is that enough to index?
- It is half of it. A table gives amounts and leaves out triggers, and the questions arriving in chat are almost entirely about triggers: when a free allowance resets, what counts towards it, which transfer types sit inside it. Writing the conditions next to the numbers fixes the page and the assistant at once.
- Should we index our internal fee waiver guidance?
- Only if you would publish it. Indexed material becomes answers, so a note saying a charge is usually returned when somebody complains is a note you have now handed to everybody who thinks to ask, on a product where that has a direct cost.
Keep reading
- Everything for a fintech appFees, limits and identity checks are safe ground. Balances, transactions and anything reading as a personal recommendation are not.
- Handling billing and invoices in generalInvoice copies, tax numbers, purchase order references. Nearly all of it is account specific, so the honest handling is process plus a clean handover.
- Publishable to the decimal point, and unquotable in the same breathMargins, thresholds and free allowances can be quoted exactly. A rate at this minute, and what a conversion costs today, cannot.
- Nothing switches off cleanly while money is still pointed at the accountClosure is not cancelling a subscription: a balance to move, arrangements still pointed at it, and a file that survives it.
- The money is coming back from somebody the customer has not written toPending against settled, who actually returns the money, and why a card dispute runs on a process the app does not operate.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.