This section covers the recurring, per-client side of billing: how the payment model works, how to activate a subscription when a client goes live, and where to find your invoices. (For the one-time setup of your payment method, see Billing setup.) Each topic has its own page:
How billing works — the payment model for managed clients.
Activating a client’s subscription— taking a client from trial to live.
Invoices— per-client invoices for your bookkeeping and re-billing.
How billing works
This page explains the payment model for your managed clients — who pays, how seats are counted, and what happens when a payment fails.
As a Managed Service Partner (MSP), you are the paying customer for all of your clients. This is the default and only billing model for managed workspaces — your clients never handle payment themselves.
The model in a nutshell:
One payer, per-client subscriptions. Each client has its own subscription with its own price and its own invoice, but all of them settle against your payment method (card or invoice billing — see Billing setup). Costs stay cleanly attributed per client, which makes passing them through to your clients straightforward.
Seats follow reality. A subscription’s seat count is based on the client’s active employees — you don’t buy seat packs or adjust quantities manually.
Clients can’t self-bill. Inside a managed workspace, all billing pages are disabled — for the client’s own admins too. Everything related to payment happens exclusively in your portal. Your clients never see prices, invoices, or payment methods.
Who manages it on your side: portal Admins and Finance Managers.
Tracking licenses across your clients
The Clients page is your license overview: the Active licenses chart shows how license usage develops across all of your clients over time (by day, week, or month), and the list below breaks it down per client — active licenses, product, pricing, and subscription status at a glance. Because seats follow each client’s active employees, this is also your early signal of growth: when a client’s team expands, you see it here before it shows up on an invoice.
When and how you’re charged:
Card billing: each client subscription charges your card automatically at the start of its billing cycle.
Invoice billing: you receive an invoice per client subscription each cycle and pay within your net terms (default 30 days).
If a payment fails:
We retry the charge automatically and send payment reminder emails.
Service is never cut retroactively — the client keeps working through the period that was already covered.
Only if payment ultimately doesn’t come through does the client’s service lapse at the end of the covered period. As soon as payment succeeds, service continues normally.
Activating a client’s subscription
This page walks you through taking a client from trial to a live, paid subscription.
A client’s workspace starts on a trial. When the client is ready to go live, you activate their subscription from the portal — the client doesn’t do anything.
Before you start, make sure:
Your billing is set up(card on file, or invoice billing arranged).
The client’s workspace has at least one active employee — a subscription for an empty workspace can’t be activated, since seats follow active employees.
How to activate:
In your client list, open the client’s row menu and choose Subscribe.
Pick the product and the billing cadence (monthly or annual) — prices already include your partner discount.
Tick the confirmation checkbox — your explicit acknowledgment that your organization takes over paying for this client.
Subscribe. The subscription starts immediately and the client’s workspace is fully active — no interruption, nothing for the client to accept. The seat count follows the client’s active employees automatically.
After activation:
The seat count keeps following the client’s active employees as their team grows or shrinks.
The subscription renews automatically each cycle against your payment method.
The client’s invoice appears in your portal every cycle — see Invoices.
Invoices
This page explains where to find your invoices and how to use them for bookkeeping and re-billing your clients.
Every client subscription produces its own invoice, and all of them are collected in your portal’s billing section.
What you’ll find:
One invoice per client per billing cycle, clearly attributed to that client’s subscription — no combined lump-sum invoices to untangle.
The full history of past invoices, available for viewing and download (PDF).
Invoice status: paid, open, or past due.
Working with invoices:
Use the per-client attribution for your own bookkeeping and for re-billing your clients — each invoice maps one-to-one to a client.
On card billing, invoices are settled automatically; you’ll rarely need to act on one.
On invoice billing, pay each invoice by bank transfer within your net terms. The invoice contains the payment details and due date.
Only Admins and Finance Managers can access invoices.
This article covers the Insightful Partner Portal (for MSPs managing client workspaces), not the standard Insightful application.