EnterraHost
Every invoice your account has ever been issued sits on one page, newest first. This is where to find an invoice, what its status is telling you, and how to pay an unpaid one without leaving the browser tab you are reading.
Where to find an invoice in the toolbox
Sign in to the toolbox and choose Billing and Emails in the left sidebar. That section holds four tabs across the top. Invoices is the one this article is about, and My Services, Orders and Emails sit beside it.
What each row is telling you
Five columns, and the two that catch people out are the dates.
Invoice date is when the invoice was raised, which is not the day it is owed. It is also the date that determines what period the invoice covers. Invoices are raised about a week before their due date, so the two dates on your newest invoice are usually seven days apart rather than the same day.
Due date is the day payment is expected. It is the one to plan around in a renewal.
Total is what is owed on that invoice, in your account currency, and it already reflects any tax and any credit balance applied to it.
Status is a label on the right of the row. Paid reads as paid. Unpaid is an invoice that is waiting for money. Collections is an invoice that has been passed to collections, which is a later stage of the same problem and is worth treating as urgent. Cancelled means it was withdrawn and nothing is owed. Refunded means it was paid and then returned to you.
Narrowing the list down
If you are looking for one invoice rather than reading them all, the search box above the table takes an invoice number, a date or an amount. A partial amount works too, so searching for the last three digits is enough. The Clear button beside it empties the box and resets the page.
You can also sort. Click Invoice #, Invoice date or the total column heading to order the table by that column, and click it again to reverse the direction. The arrow beside the heading shows which way it is running.
Ten invoices fit on a page. When there are more, page numbers appear below the table with Prev and Next either side of them, and a line reading how many of the total you are looking at. Expected a page further down the list than the one the table landed on.
Paying one
An unpaid or collections row carries a Pay button beside its status. Pressing it opens the checkout for that single invoice in a new tab, where you choose the payment method and complete the payment. Nothing else in the list changes while you do it, and there is no way to pay the wrong invoice by clicking the invoice number instead, because the number opens the invoice rather than the checkout.
Once the payment clears, the status on that row changes to Paid the next time the page loads. If it has not changed and you know the payment left your account, refresh the page before assuming anything went wrong. A payment that has been taken but not yet confirmed shows as unpaid for a short time.
Paying automatically
If you entered card details during checkout and they were stored against your account, an invoice can be charged to that card on its due date without you doing anything. That is what keeps a subscription running when you are not watching the inbox.
Two limits are worth knowing. The charge is attempted once, and a failed attempt is not retried in a loop. So an expired card fails quietly from your point of view until the reminder arrives. The second is that a stored card only settles the invoice it is pointed at. A new card does not automatically take over invoices raised before you changed it.
If you would rather pay each one yourself, that is what happens by default. Automatic charging is a consequence of leaving a card on file, not a setting you have to fight.
What happens as a due date passes
Nothing dramatic happens on the day itself. The reminders and any suspension run on their own schedule behind the scenes, and knowing it is easier than wondering whether the account is about to break.
An invoice raised and left unpaid collects a first reminder one day after the due date, and a second one three days after. There is no third notice configured, so the second one is the last email you will get about that invoice.
At the same three-day mark, the service behind an unpaid invoice becomes eligible for suspension. That is what turns an ignored invoice into a website that has stopped answering. Once the invoice is paid, suspension lifts automatically and the service comes back without a support ticket. Letting an unpaid invoice run fourteen days past the due date is what moves a service from suspended towards termination, which is the point at which you want a backup rather than a refund.
Getting a copy of an invoice
Clicking the invoice number opens the full invoice with its line items, the payment history and a Download PDF button. That PDF is the version to send to an accountant, because it carries the invoice number, both dates and the totals as a single document rather than as a page of your account.