PortalBank Balance Power-Up

Attach a balance to any Item, Add-on or Package with the Adjust Contact Balance automation. When the invoice is paid, the hours, appointment credits or money land on that client’s balance, multiplied by the quantity bought, once per paid line. Each Item says exactly what it adds (for example, 10 Associate hours and 2 Check-Ins for each one bought), and nothing is credited from an estimate or proposal before money arrives.

For example, a web agency sells a 20-hour support block as an Item it already has. It adds one automation to that Item, and every time a client pays for a block, 20 hours appear on that client’s balance. There is no parallel sales process: the same Items, invoices and checkout the agency already uses.

The same automation runs on schedules and forms as well as paid invoices. It can add to a balance, subtract from it, or set it to an exact amount, such as a monthly “Set to 10” reset for a retainer, or a form that grants a bonus credit as a giveaway.

For example, a fractional CFO sells a monthly retainer of ten advisory hours. A schedule sets the client’s balance back to ten at the start of each month, so the retainer resets on its own and nobody tracks it by hand.

When billed time is covered by prepaid hours, the client receives a $0.00 invoice with each line marked as covered by their balance, already settled. Hours are counted in hours, so your hourly rate and what the client paid for the package never appear, which means you can sell 20 hours for the price of 10 without ever exposing the discount. Optional Hour Classes let hours bought for Senior time be drawn only by Senior staff, and un-billing time gives the hours back.

For example, a law firm sells senior and associate hours separately. The client sees “3 Senior hours left” beside “13.5 Associate hours left,” and each person’s time draws only the hours it should. The firm set that up once, in one list, and never touches a staff form.

At checkout, clients can choose to pay an invoice from their credit, seeing what’s available and what stays after paying (partial use only where the invoice allows partial payment). When a session is covered by appointment credits, the paid checkout is replaced by a covered booking, one credit per booking, and cancelling before the start time returns the credit.

For example, a coach’s client bought a five-session Check-In pack. When she books her next session, checkout simply says it’s covered by her balance and shows how many Check-Ins remain after this one. No card, no second invoice. When she cancels the day before, the credit comes straight back.

Clients see each balance and every entry behind it in their own portal: one figure per balance type, a balance below zero in red, and a searchable, filterable history in plain words. Your team sees the same card on the client’s record, plus internal notes, and can add an entry (add, subtract or set to) or reverse one. No entry is ever edited or deleted, so a mistake is reversed in the open and the history always adds up.

For example, a web agency’s client wonders whether one more homepage revision is worth asking for. She opens her portal and sees 6.5 hours left, with the work listed underneath: three hours on the homepage rebuild, an hour and a half on form fixes. She doesn’t email anyone. She asks for the revision with confidence.

You get an email when a balance runs low (by default at 20 percent of the last purchase), sent to the account owner and never to the client. A list of every client holding a balance shows Low Balance and Below Zero labels. Running out never stops your team: the balance goes below zero, you can see it, and you decide what to do.

For example, an IT consultancy that sells blocks of support hours gets the low-balance email one Tuesday and sends the renewal that afternoon, before the client has noticed anything is running low.

Staff start and stop timers exactly as they always have. With the default setting, billed time comes off prepaid hours by itself; or switch to taking hours by hand, with a Cover with Prepaid Hours choice when billing time. A business that just wants to sell hours adds one automation to an Item it already sells, and the finer controls stay out of the way until it needs them. The balance lives in your branded portal, so it looks like a service you offer, not software you bought.

For example, a bookkeeping firm’s team logs time against client work the same way they did last month. The arithmetic happens out of sight and lands on each client’s balance, and the client’s portal is current the moment they look.