Send a Payment Request to a Customer's Accountant
Email a customer's accountant or bookkeeper a secure link that collects payment details for that customer's Outermind subscription. The recipient never gets an Outermind account and never sees anything except what is needed to pay.
Overview
A payment request is the right tool when the person who can enter a card is not the person who uses Outermind. That is the normal case for small and mid-sized customers: the console admin runs the trial, and a bookkeeper or an external accountant holds the company card.
There are two ways a payment request can start:
| Started by | Surface | Invoicing option |
|---|---|---|
| Outermind support | Global Admin Portal, customer record, Billing tab | Available, off by default |
| The customer | Their own console, Administration > Subscription | Never available |
Both produce the same email and the same accountant-facing page. Both lists show every request for that customer, whoever created it, so you and the customer are always looking at the same picture.
Ask the customer to self-serve instead when a console admin at the customer holds the billing:write permission and simply needs to point the request at their own accountant. Send it yourself when the customer cannot reach that page, when you are working a renewal or a failed payment on their behalf, or when you intend to offer invoicing.
Where the card is
Open the customer in the Global Admin Portal and select the Billing tab of the customer record. The Payment requests card sits below Payment History.
- Send payment request opens the send modal. The button is hidden if your Global Admin account does not hold the billing write scope, and it stays disabled until the portal has resolved which region owns the customer.
- Only a signed-in human Global Admin can create, resend or revoke a request. A service principal holding the same scope is refused, so these emails can never be sent in bulk by a script.
The table lists every request for the customer, newest first:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Sent | When the email went out, with a "resent" badge and count |
| Type | "Convert to paid" or "Update card", plus an "invoicing allowed" chip when you ticked that box |
| Plan | Tier and billing cycle, or "current plan" for a card update |
| Recipient | The billing contact address, with the CC count on hover |
| Status | pending, opened, processing, completed (via card or via invoice), expired, revoked, or send failed |
| Expires | The absolute date the link stops working |
| Requested by | The requester's email, with a chip reading "Outermind" or "Customer" |
| Actions | Resend and Revoke, where the status allows them |
There is no copy-link action anywhere in the portal, and there never will be. The raw link is generated once, put in the email, and never returned to an operator. If someone needs the link again, the only way to deliver it is Resend.
Choosing the request type
Convert trial to paid subscription is offered when the customer has no live Stripe subscription and is not billed through a partner. Pick the tier and the billing cycle; the modal shows the live price in the customer's own currency. Only public, non-enterprise tiers that carry a price in that currency can be selected.
Update payment card is offered when the customer already has a Stripe customer and subscription that is active, past due, awaiting payment, or a trial whose card will be charged at trial end.
Whichever option does not apply is disabled with the reason on screen, for example "This customer already has an active Stripe subscription. Use Update payment card." The same eligibility test runs again when the accountant clicks the link, so a request cannot be redeemed on Wednesday for a reason that would have refused it on Monday.
Customers billed through an MSP partner are never eligible for either type.
When to tick Allow invoicing
Allow invoicing is off by default and appears only in the Global Admin Portal. Ticking it adds a second option on the accountant's page: pay by card, or set up invoicing on 30 day terms.
Tick it only when Outermind is willing to carry the payment risk for this customer. The consequences are real:
- The customer is activated immediately, before any money arrives.
- Invoices are issued from Stripe and are due within 30 days.
- Your name is recorded as the approver, both on the request itself and in the customer's subscription history.
Leave it clear for anything speculative, low value, or unknown to you. The customer's own console can never offer invoicing, by design: only an Outermind operator can accept that risk.
The note and the W-9
Note to the billing contact is pre-filled with copy suited to the request type. It explains what the email is, what the link does, that the charge shows on the card statement as OUTERMIND, INC., and that the W-9 is attached. The company name is substituted for you.
The note is fully editable up to 1000 characters and is quoted verbatim in the email, attributed to Outermind support. It follows a change of request type until you edit it, after which your text stays. It is the only free text you can put in front of a third party, so keep it factual.
Every request email, on both first send and resend, carries Outermind's Form W-9 as a PDF attachment for the accountant's vendor records. Completion emails carry no attachment.
Recipients
One billing contact address is required; a name is optional. You can CC up to five more people. An address on a public mailbox provider such as Gmail or Outlook.com raises a warning, never a refusal, because many bookkeepers legitimately use one.
Link validity and one live request per type
Choose how long the link stays valid: 7, 14 or 30 days, defaulting to 14. Expiry is evaluated when the link is opened, so an expired link can mint nothing.
A customer can have at most one live request per type at a time. Sending a new request of the same type automatically revokes the earlier one, and the earlier link stops working. A request that is mid-completion blocks a new one of that type until it settles.
Resend and Revoke
Resend is available while a request is pending, opened, expired, or failed to send. It issues a brand new link, resets the validity window to the length you chose at creation, and increments the resend count. The previous link stops working immediately, so resending is also the correct response to a link that went to the wrong person.
The resend dialog shows the current recipient and CC list and lets you correct them before sending.
Revoke is available while a request is pending, opened, or failed to send, and is final. A revoked request cannot be resent or completed, and a late confirmation arriving from Stripe for it does nothing.
After you send
The result panel tells you exactly what happened:
- Sent with the recipient and CC count.
- Saved, but email is disabled in this environment. The request exists; use Resend once transport is enabled.
- Saved, but the email could not be sent, with the failure text. Use Resend.
Any warnings, such as a public mailbox domain, appear as amber notes.
What the accountant sees
The link opens an Outermind page that shows only:
- The customer's company name and the Outermind wordmark.
- The plan, the billing cycle, and the price per cycle in the customer's currency. A tier with no published price in that currency reads "as agreed with Outermind", never as zero.
- Your note, in a quoted block.
- The date the link expires.
- For a card update, a line explaining that this replaces the card on the existing subscription.
- Where the customer's trial is being honoured, the date the card will first be charged.
The page never shows the CC list, who requested it, or any Stripe or tenant identifier, and it never signs anyone in to Outermind. There is no navigation into the product from it.
What completes the request
Pay by credit card hands off to Stripe Checkout. Every click mints a fresh Stripe session, so an abandoned attempt costs nothing and the accountant can come back later while the link is valid.
The request is marked complete only when Stripe confirms the payment back to Outermind, not when the browser returns from Checkout. The accountant sees a short "confirming your payment" wait; if Stripe is slow, the page tells them the payment was received and that confirmation will follow by email.
If the customer still has more than 48 hours of trial remaining, the trial is honoured: the card is saved now and first charged on the trial end date.
Set up invoicing, shown only when you allowed it, expands a short form for the billing contact, the company billing address and an optional PO number. Submitting it creates the Stripe subscription on 30 day invoice terms and activates the customer straight away. The form is single-completion, so a double submit cannot create two subscriptions. If it fails, nothing is set up and the accountant can try again.
On completion the accountant and the CC list receive a confirmation, and the customer's own console admins receive a notice.
FAQ
The customer sent a request themselves. Can I resend or revoke it? Yes. Both surfaces list every request for that customer regardless of which one created it, and either can resend or revoke. A request created in the customer's console shows "Customer" in Requested by; one you created shows "Outermind" in their list.
Can I add a discount or promotion code to a payment request? No. Promotion codes are deliberately disabled on this path so an untracked discount cannot enter through the accountant's browser. Apply discounts with the existing billing tooling after the subscription is active.
The accountant says the link is dead. Check the status. Expired means the validity window elapsed; revoked means someone revoked it, which also happens automatically when a newer request of the same type was sent. In both cases, Resend or send a new request.
Why can I not see the link to paste into a chat? By design. The email is the only delivery channel, which keeps the link out of tickets, chat logs and screenshots. Use Resend to redeliver it.
Nothing happens after the accountant pays. Completion is recorded from Stripe's confirmation. If the status is still processing after a few minutes, check the customer's payment history and Stripe activity before sending anything new; the request will settle on its own once the confirmation arrives.