Billing and expiry

Every PPPoE customer has a Paid Until date. While it is in the future they can connect at their package speed. This page explains how that date moves, what happens when it passes, and the settings that control it.

How a customer pays

Each customer has their own ISPMan account number (shown as Account in lists, and on the customer page as the account number with Available Balance, Current Balance and Vendor Balance). The customer pays into that account number through the payment methods you have set up, for example M-Pesa. When a payment arrives, it is used to pay for the package and Paid Until moves forward by one package period.

You can also take payment for them:

STK Push on the customer page sends a payment request to their phone for the amount due.
Deposit records cash, cheque or a payment made directly to one of your providers.
Connect turns them on to a date you choose, in Normal, Grace Period or Free Trial mode.

See Customers for those buttons, and Payments for setting up payment methods.

What happens at expiry

When Paid Until passes:

If the customer already paid for a next package, that package starts.
Otherwise ISPMan tries to renew from the customer’s balance. If there is enough, one more period is paid for and the customer stays connected.
If there isn’t enough, the customer is disconnected. They can’t reconnect until they pay.

An expired customer’s browser is sent to your portal, where they can pay. In your captive portal theme settings you can turn on Show the expired notice so they first see a short notice explaining why, with a button to their account.

Special prices

To charge one customer a different price from their package, open Edit Details on their page and set Special Price (leave blank to use package price). Renewals and payment requests then use that price.

Grace period and deactivation

An expired account isn’t deactivated straight away. Settings → PPPoE Deactivation Policy (/dashboard/settings/pppoe-deactivation-policy) sets how many days an expired customer’s account stays active, without payment, before it is deactivated.

Enter a Grace period (days) between 7 and 365, then Save policy.
Leave it empty to use the default of 7 days.
Only owners and admins can change it.

You can also deactivate a customer yourself at any time with Deactivate on their page, or for many customers with Bulk actions.

Installation fees

An installation fee is a one-time charge collected with a customer’s first package payment. The customer is connected once the package price plus the fee is paid.

Settings → Installation Fees sets the fee for new PPPoE customers. Turn on Require an installation fee for new PPPoE customers to pre-fill it on every new customer.
When adding a customer you can change or clear the fee for that customer.
On the customer page, Installation Fee (one-time) shows the amount and whether it is paid. Owners and admins can click Waive installation fee (or Remove waiver) while it is still unpaid.
First Payment Due shows the total the customer needs to pay to get connected.

Expiry and payment SMS

Each package chooses when customers get expiry reminders (from 1 week before expiry to When Expired). See Packages.
SMS Settings has PPPoE Payment Confirmation and PPPoE Expiry SMS switches.
The wording comes from your SMS templates. See Communication.

Reading the status tabs

On Services → PPPoEs the tabs filter customers as follows:

Tab	Shows customers who…
Expired	have a Paid Until date in the past.
Unpaid	have never paid, or expired more than 30 days ago.
Active / Inactive	are activated / deactivated.
Connected	were seen online in the last 10 minutes.
Interested in another package	picked a different next package.

The By expiry chips (for example Expiring Tomorrow or Expired Yesterday) are good for daily follow-up calls and reminders.