Plans & Billing
Choose a plan, change it as you grow, track usage against your limits, and recover from a failed payment.
Overview
Everything about your organization's subscription lives under Settings → Billing, split across three tabs: Plan, Invoices, and Usage & Limits. Payments are processed by Stripe — Cardinal never stores your card details, and the actions that touch a payment method hand off to Stripe's hosted pages.
Who Can See Billing
The Billing section appears for members with the Owner, Admin, or Billing role in their home organization. Everyone else works in Cardinal without seeing plan or payment details at all.
The Plans
Foundations and Professional are self-serve: pick one and subscribe from inside Cardinal. Enterprise is quoted rather than purchased online — the Plan tab shows a callout for getting in touch instead of a price.
Choosing Your First Plan
New organizations pick a plan as the last step of setup. You'll land on the plan picker after creating your account, and the app stays behind that step until a subscription is active — so the first thing you see in Cardinal is your own working org, not an empty trial.
How Checkout Works
- Choose monthly or annual billing with the toggle — the prices on the cards update to match.
- Each card shows what the plan is for and its caps for properties and active leases, so you can size the plan to your portfolio.
- Picking a plan sends you to Stripe Checkout to enter payment details. Stripe handles the payment page; you return to Cardinal when it's done.
- On your way back you'll see a confirmation screen. If Stripe is still confirming the payment it reads Activating your subscription… for a moment, then hands you to your dashboard automatically.
If Checkout Doesn't Finish
Backing out of Stripe or abandoning the payment leaves you on the plan step with nothing charged — pick a plan again whenever you're ready. If a payment is declined, Stripe reports it on its own page before you return, so you can try a different card without losing your place.
Managing Your Plan
Your Current Subscription
The card at the top of the Plan tab is the state of your subscription at a glance: the plan you're on, a status badge (Active, Trialing, Past due, Canceled, and so on), and the date it next renews.
- Manage in Stripe opens Stripe's customer portal, where you update your card, billing address, and tax details
- Cancel subscription asks you to confirm, then ends the subscription at the end of the current billing period — you keep access until then, you aren't charged again, and you can resubscribe at any time
- Once a cancellation is scheduled the card reads Canceled — you'll keep access until [date] instead of a renewal date, and the Cancel subscription button goes away — resume from the Stripe portal
- If a payment has failed, the card also says so and tells you how long you have to update your payment method — see When a Payment Fails below
Switching Plans
Each card's button tells you exactly what clicking it does. Your current plan is outlined and marked Current, and its button is disabled.
Upgrading
An upgrade takes effect immediately. You're billed today, with credit for the time you already paid for on the old plan, and your billing period restarts from today — so the next renewal is a full month or year from the upgrade, not from your original signup date. Because it charges right away, Cardinal asks you to confirm first.
Switching Between Monthly and Annual
Use the billing-interval toggle above the cards, then choose Switch to annual (or monthly) on your plan. Like an upgrade, it bills today with credit for unused time and asks for confirmation.
Downgrading
A downgrade takes effect immediately, after you confirm. Nothing is charged today — credit for the unused time on your current plan is applied to your next invoice. A downgrade is only available once your usage fits inside the smaller plan's caps. Until it does, the button stays disabled and reads Available when usage is within [plan] limits — check the Usage & Limits tab to see which number is over, then archive or remove what you no longer need.
Enterprise
Enterprise is priced by quote, so it isn't purchasable from the catalog — the Plan tab shows a Contact sales callout instead. If your organization is already on Enterprise, the Plan tab shows your subscription card with Manage in Stripe and Cancel subscription, and no self-serve catalog: plan changes go through your Cardinal contact.
Usage, Limits & Invoices
Usage & Limits
The Usage & Limits tab shows what your plan allows and how much of it you're using — one row per metric, with a bar for how full it is.
- Properties and Active leases are tracked as current / cap
- The bar turns red at 80% so you get warning before you're blocked, not at the moment you are
- Metrics your plan doesn't cap show as Unlimited with no bar
This is also the page to check before a downgrade: it shows exactly which number has to come down first.
Invoices
The Invoices tab lists your billing history — date, amount, and a status chip for each invoice:
- Paid — settled, nothing owed
- Open — issued and awaiting payment
- Draft — not yet finalized
- Void — cancelled; no payment is due
- Uncollectible — written off
View opens the invoice hosted by Stripe, where you can download a PDF or pay an outstanding balance.
Plan Limits & Upgrade Prompts
Plans cap two things: how many properties you manage and how many leases can be active at once. When an action would go past a cap, Cardinal explains why at the moment you try it rather than hiding the feature. The prompt names your current plan and offers the upgrade that unlocks the action — you can dismiss it and carry on with everything else.
Property Limit
Adding a property beyond your plan's cap prompts an upgrade. Existing properties are untouched — the cap only limits adding more.
Active Lease Limit
Plans cap how many leases can be active at once. Activating one past the cap prompts an upgrade; ended leases don't count against it.
Notices in the Form
If you're already at a cap, the notice appears right where you'd act — in the form when you go to add a property or a lease, and on an inactive lease in place of activating it — with an Upgrade to [plan] button that takes you to the Plan tab. Only members who can manage billing get the button; everyone else sees a note to ask an owner or billing admin of the organization — which matters when you're working in a property that belongs to another organization.
To see where you stand before you hit a wall, open Settings → Billing → Usage & Limits — it shows each metric against its cap and flags anything past 80%.
When a Payment Fails
A card expires or a charge is declined, and your subscription becomes Past due. What happens next depends on your plan, but your data is safe throughout — nothing is deleted, and access returns as soon as the payment goes through.
Foundations & Professional
Self-serve plans have no grace period. As soon as a payment fails, Cardinal shows a recovery screen instead of the app until the payment method is updated.
Enterprise
Enterprise plans keep full access for 7 days after a failed payment. During that time a banner at the top of every page counts down the days left; once the grace period runs out, the recovery screen takes over.
The Past-Due Banner
The banner reads Payment failed. followed by how long you have to fix it — Update payment within 5 days to avoid losing access, becoming more urgent in the last two days. Members who can manage billing see an Update payment button that opens Stripe to add a new card; the failed invoice is retried automatically once it's saved. Anyone can dismiss the banner, but it comes back the next time you open Cardinal.
Your Payment Failed
Shown when a charge couldn't be collected and there's no grace period left. Update payment opens Stripe to add a working card; paying the outstanding invoice restores access right away and keeps your original billing dates.
Your Subscription Has Ended
Shown once a subscription has fully lapsed or been cancelled. Renewing starts a fresh subscription — you pick a plan again, and the new billing period runs from the day you renew.
Your Subscription Is Paused
If your organization's account has been paused, everyone in it sees this screen instead of the app. Your data is safe and will be there when you return. To resume, contact us at support@withcardinal.com.
If You Can't Fix It Yourself
Only members who can manage billing see the recovery button. Everyone else gets the same explanation with a note to ask an owner or billing manager to restore access — so a teammate without billing permissions knows what happened and who to ask, rather than staring at a locked app.