Ledgr/Documentation/Billing & your plan

Billing & your plan

What you pay, when you are asked for it, what changes when you switch plan, and exactly what happens if you stop. All of it lives in Settings → Billing & Plan.

Terms and what a year costs

Every paid plan is sold for 1, 3, 6 or 12 months. A twelve-month term is billed as eleven months, so a year of Business is R5 489 rather than twelve times R499 — one month free for committing.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Paying

By card, through Yoco. Ledgr never sees or stores your card details. You can buy before you have an account — the licence key is emailed to you and you paste it in when you sign up — or from Settings → Billing & Plan if you already have one, in which case the modules unlock the moment the payment clears.

Every payment is listed under Billing history on the same screen, with its invoice: press Invoice beside a paid one to download it again. It is the same document the licence email carried — an invoice rather than a tax invoice, because Ledgr's seller is not a registered VAT vendor and no VAT is charged.

Renewal

Because nothing is charged automatically, Ledgr's job is to make sure the renewal never surprises you:

1. Before your term ends

   Ledgr raises the renewal order, prepares a payment link and emails it to you — seven days out on a one, three or six-month term, and thirty days out on a twelve-month one, because a year of a bigger plan is not a payment most businesses can get approved in a week.

2. Reminders

   Three days before the date — and on a twelve-month term also at seven days before — then again three and ten days after it if it is still unpaid.

3. Paying extends from where you were

   A renewal is added to your existing expiry date, not to today. Paying a week early buys you a month, not three weeks — you are never charged for time you gave up by being prompt.

4. A week's grace

   For seven days after the date you can keep working normally while the payment is sorted out. After that, until it is paid, Ledgr is read-only: you can open and export everything, but not edit.

5. If it goes unpaid

   The renewal is abandoned twenty-one days after the date and the plan ends. The month of read-only access described under what happens if you stop is counted from the date your paid term ended, not from the day the renewal was abandoned.

Changing plan

Upgrades take effect immediately — the modules unlock as soon as the payment clears. The screen you paid from picks the change up by itself; see the last troubleshooting row for another device. A plan change starts a fresh term, and the part of your current term you have not used is credited against it.

Downgrading is the same mechanism in the other direction. Nothing is deleted when a module locks: the screens stop opening, the data stays, and upgrading again brings it all back exactly as it was.

A smaller plan has fewer seats and API keys, so a downgrade waits until what you hold fits it: the plan change names how many people to deactivate and how many keys to revoke under Settings → Users & Roles, and goes through once you have. You choose who and which; nothing is switched off for you. If a plan ends and the business drops to a smaller one, every user and key stays, but nobody more can be switched on and the newest keys beyond the allowance stop answering until one is revoked.

The payroll band

Payroll is metered by usage, but only above 10 employees. How and when usage is charged is under how usage is billed. Transactions are never metered on any plan, and a module you unlock applies to every company you run rather than being charged again on each. Only four things carry a real per-use cost and are billed by usage: payroll, storage, WhatsApp messages and AI receipt scans, each covered below. Users and companies work differently again — they are an allowance per plan, never a per-seat bill, and if you outgrow yours you buy a pack rather than being metered. See add-ons.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Growing past your band never stops a pay run. Payslips run, EMP201s are prepared, and the difference is billed as usage. Your headcount and current band are shown in Settings, so it is never a surprise on an invoice. If your headcount falls, so does the band.

Storage

The next metered thing, and the same rule applies: it is billed as usage, never a locked screen. Refusing to store a receipt would break the books and the VAT claim behind them.

• Your plan includes 2 GB on Starter up to 10 GB on Manufacturing — see the table above.
• Past your allowance it is R18 per whole gigabyte per month, measured from what you are storing when each month is billed.
• A usage card warns you at 80% of your allowance, before anything is charged.

For scale: a receipt photograph is around 240 KB once Ledgr has recompressed it, so a gigabyte is roughly four thousand receipts. Only files you upload count — receipts, product photographs, signatures, logos. Invoices, payslips and reports are generated when you ask for them and stored nowhere, so they cost you nothing.

WhatsApp messages & AI receipt scans

Two things carry a real per-use cost to Ledgr every time you use them — a WhatsApp Business message (reminders, receipts, statements) and an AI receipt scan. Both are metered for the same reason storage and payroll are, and follow the same rule: each plan includes a generous monthly allowance, and going over is billed as usage rather than blocked. The one limit is daily, on WhatsApp: in any 24 hours a company can send up to its plan's monthly allowance, so a fault cannot send thousands at once. Sending resumes automatically as the 24-hour window moves on.

• WhatsApp messages included run from 100 on Starter to 500 on Manufacturing; past that it is R0.65 per message.
• AI receipt scans included run from 50 on Starter to 1 000 on Manufacturing; past that it is R0.45 per scan.
• Scan a lot? Turn on AI Assist for a flat R99 a month and receipt scans are unlimited — the meter also caps itself, so you never pay more than that flat rate.

A usage card in Settings → Billing & Plan shows where you are against each allowance, so an overage is never a surprise on an invoice.

How usage is billed

The four usage charges — the payroll band, storage, WhatsApp messages and AI receipt scans — are billed differently depending on your term:

• One-month term. Anything beyond your plan's allowances is added to your next renewal. There is no separate bill.
• Three, six or twelve-month term. Your plan and add-ons are paid up front for the term; usage is not. At the end of each month Ledgr works out what you used beyond your allowances and emails you a usage bill for that month, with its own payment link, so usage never builds up over the term. The first one arrives about a month after your term starts.
• Small months. If a month's usage comes to less than R20, no payment link is raised for it — it is carried forward and added to the next usage bill that reaches R20, or to your next renewal, whichever comes first.

The billing card in Settings → Billing & Plan says which of these applies to you, and shows any usage that has been carried forward.

Add-ons

An add-on is the alternative to an upgrade, never a meter: it only appears when you would otherwise have to move up a whole tier, and it is always priced below that tier. Everything is a flat monthly charge except extra seats (sold in packs of five) and live driver tracking (priced R39 per driver).

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Add-ons are bought and removed in Settings → Billing & Plan. If the next plan up would be cheaper than the add-ons you hold, Ledgr says so, so you never quietly pay more for less.

Cancelling

Cancelling means stop renewing. There is no refund and nothing is switched off early: you keep every day you have paid for, and the plan ends on the date your current term does. The same switch turns automatic renewal reminders back on if you change your mind.

After a plan ends

Ledgr does not hold your books hostage, and it does not keep them forever either. Both halves of that matter, so here is the whole of it:

1. Read-only, for one month

   You can sign in, open every screen, run every report and export everything. You cannot write — that was already true the moment the licence lapsed.

2. Three warnings

   At twenty-one days, seven days and one day, each naming the exact date and pointing at Settings → Data.

3. Then the account can be closed

   From the date in the warnings — never earlier — the account can be closed for good. Closing deletes every file uploaded to it (receipts, photographs, signatures, logos) and the backups Ledgr made of it, and erases every user's name, email address and password so nobody can sign in again. This is not reversible.

Closing does not erase the records you typed in — invoices, the ledger, contacts, employees. They stay in Ledgr's database, closed off, and cannot be opened through Ledgr again. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is kept and how to ask for personal information in it to be destroyed.

Licence keys

A key bought before sign-up is redeemed on the first step of registration; a key issued to you directly goes into Settings → Billing & Plan. Either way the plan switches over on the spot.

Hand-issued keys — for partners and pilots — do not renew themselves. You are told before a dated one expires and invited to subscribe, rather than it lapsing silently, and some are issued with no expiry at all.

Common problems