Managing your plan

Once you have an active subscription (not just a trial), all subscription management happens inside the billing portal — a secure, hosted page that Distribu links to from the billing dashboard. It covers plan changes, payment method updates, invoice downloads, and cancellation.

The portal handles proration math, tax recalculation, invoice PDFs, and card-update flows with 3D Secure authentication — all taken care of for you.

Getting to the portal

From /dashboard/billing, click Manage billing in the top-right of the current-plan card:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Current plan                                           │
│ Growth  [Active]                       [Manage billing]│
│ Renews on May 16, 2026                                 │
│ Billed monthly                                         │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The button only appears once you have an active paid subscription — not during the free trial. Trialing accounts see Upgrade plan and View plans links instead, which lead to the same checkout flow described in Plans & subscription.

Clicking the button opens a one-time portal session and redirects you there. The link is short-lived (a few minutes) — if you close the tab and come back tomorrow, click Manage billing again to get a fresh session.

The portal has a Return to Distribu link at the top that takes you back to /dashboard/billing when you're done.

What you can do in the portal

Change plan

Pick any other plan (Starter / Growth / Enterprise). The portal shows the new price, the proration credit for the unused portion of your current period, and the net charge — all before you confirm.

Upgrades take effect immediately. You're charged the prorated difference on the next invoice, and the new higher limits apply right away. If you were at your previous plan's cap, you can add more products / customers / team / orders the moment the change applies.

Downgrades also take effect immediately. You'll get a proration credit for the unused portion of the old plan. But downgrading doesn't magically delete things to fit under the new cap — if you're on Growth with 400 products and downgrade to Starter (50 product limit), all 400 products stay visible and editable. You just can't create new ones until you're back under 50.

To plan ahead before a downgrade, check the usage panel on /dashboard/billing for a full picture of where you stand vs. each plan's limits.

Change billing interval

Switching between monthly and annual on the same plan works the same way as a plan change — prorated, immediate. Annual plans save ≈20%, so switching from monthly to annual usually means a larger charge now but lower cost over a year.

Update payment method

Add a new card, remove an old one, set which card is default. Apple Pay / Google Pay / bank-account direct debit (ACH/SEPA) are supported where available in your country.

3D Secure (3DS) authentication is handled automatically when your bank requires it.

If a charge fails, updating the payment method re-attempts the failed invoice on the spot — no waiting for the next scheduled retry.

Download invoices and receipts

Every invoice — paid, pending, or failed — is listed in the portal with a Download link for the PDF. Historical invoices for tax-filing purposes are all there.

Distribu itself doesn't mint invoice emails or PDFs for subscription charges (the billing portal does). The invoice PDFs we generate are for customer orders your distributor clients place — a totally separate system.

Cancel subscription

One-click cancel. You're asked to confirm, and the cancellation is scheduled for the end of the current billing period — so you keep access for the rest of the time you've already paid for. Your subscription status stays ACTIVE until the period actually ends, at which point it flips to CANCELED.

If you change your mind before the period ends, the portal has a Don't cancel / Renew subscription link that reverses the scheduled cancellation.

Once cancellation actually takes effect, the billing dashboard shows:

Canceled · Access until May 16, 2026

After that date, the subscription is gone. Your data is not deleted automatically — products, customers, orders, team members, and settings all stay. You can re-subscribe from /dashboard/billing/plans and pick up where you left off.

When payments fail

Failed charges are retried automatically on a schedule (typically 4 attempts over 3 weeks) before the invoice is declared permanently failed. Throughout that window, your subscription shows as PAST_DUE:

[Past due] Payment past due. Your last payment failed. Update your payment method to avoid losing access.

A yellow banner on the billing dashboard links directly to the portal's payment-method-update screen:

[Update payment method]

Updating the card (or adding a new one) and saving triggers an immediate retry of the failed invoice. Once paid, the subscription snaps back to ACTIVE.

What happens if the retries exhaust? The subscription is cancelled automatically. You end up in the same "Canceled · Access until …" state as a manual cancellation, with the end-of-period already behind you.

Changes sync back automatically

Everything you do in the portal is reflected back into Distribu within seconds — plan changes, interval switches, cancellations, payment failures, and successful retries.

If you just made a change in the portal and Distribu still shows the old state, give it 5–10 seconds and refresh. If something's still stale after a minute, email support@distribu.app with your company name and we'll reconcile it manually.

Common questions

Can I pre-pay for a year mid-month?

Yes — switch from monthly to annual in the portal. The unused portion of the current month is prorated against the first year's charge and you're invoiced the difference. Effective date is immediate.

Can I get an invoice with my company's tax ID on it?

The portal lets you save tax IDs (VAT, GSTIN, ABN, etc.) on your billing profile. Once added, future invoices include the tax ID in the header. For past invoices — contact support; we can retroactively update an invoice's tax ID on request.

Can I pay by bank transfer instead of card?

For Starter and Growth — card only (plus Apple/Google Pay and, in eligible countries, direct-debit bank connections). For Enterprise, we support invoice-based billing with net-30 terms through a custom contract. Email support@distribu.app to arrange.

What if I want to hold onto my data without paying?

Cancel in the portal. After the period ends, you'll be on status CANCELED with read-only style access — the app doesn't hard-block anything today (see Plans & subscription → Plan limits are the real cap), so your data stays accessible. Usage limits still apply at Starter levels, though, so you won't be able to add new records past those caps.

If you specifically want a data export before walking away: use the CSV exports for products and customers, and the REST API for orders. All of your data is extractable without subscription state gating it.

Can I transfer a subscription to a new company?

Not today through self-serve. If you need to move the subscription from one Distribu company to another — for a merger or rebrand — email support and we'll handle it manually.

Do you keep my card on file?

No — card data is held by our secure payment processor and never touches Distribu's servers. Distribu only ever sees a tokenised reference to the saved card.

Related

• Plans & subscription — plan comparison, pricing, the trial, and the initial checkout flow.
• Pricing page — the public marketing view.

That's the end of the Billing section. Next up: Integrations — connecting Distribu to your other systems via the REST API, webhooks, and CSV.