pay · invoices, deposits, retainers

Paying me should be the short part

Two things bring people to this page: an invoice already sitting in your inbox, or a deposit before work starts. Either way the payment finishes on a Stripe page rather than on this one, there is no account to create, and I never see your card number.

Read this first

There are no self-serve payment links on this page right now, and it is not going to show you buttons that do not work. Billing runs by invoice: email ken.valenzuela@consultedbykenough.io and you get an invoice with the payment options attached to it. Everything below is how that invoice behaves once it reaches you.

you have an invoice

Pay the invoice you were sent

The invoice I emailed you has a pay button inside it, and that is the shortest path there is: it already knows the amount, the work period, and the reference. If that email is gone, it can be resent.

There is no self-serve portal to send you to. Email me and I will resend the invoice.

Email me

you owe a deposit

Pay a deposit before work starts

New work starts with a deposit against a scope you have already approved. Deposits are not a fixed number: the amount is whatever the scope calls for, so this fits a small first phase and a long build equally well.

Deposits are invoiced rather than sold from a page. Email me with the scope and the invoice comes back to you.

Email me

you are on a retainer

Start or update a retainer

A retainer bills itself on a schedule once it is running, so the only reasons to come here are starting one, or changing the payment method behind one that already exists.

A retainer gets set up in a conversation, not a checkout. Email me and we will pick the schedule.

Email me

First, the part that decides how to read the rest: the invoice total is what you pay. Processing fees come out of my side, they are never added to your bill, and payment processing is not marked up. An invoice for a thousand dollars costs you a thousand dollars whichever way you pay it.

Both work, and I would rather you used ACH Direct Debit. A card fee is a percentage of the total, so it grows every time the invoice does. ACH does not work that way, and on a large invoice it costs materially less. Since I absorb that difference, choosing ACH saves money I would otherwise pay rather than money you would otherwise be charged. That makes this a favor rather than advice, and it is fine to decline it.

ACH Direct Debit is a debit, not a wire. You authorize it once on Stripe's page and the amount gets pulled from the account. You never push money at an account number, so if anything ever asks you to wire funds somewhere on my behalf, it is not from me. The ACH option appears on the invoice itself, and it needs a US bank account.

So: ACH for anything sizeable, card when clearing today matters more than the fee. Nobody is going to be annoyed with you for picking the fast one.

source: Stripe's published processing fees, which price cards as a percentage of the total and ACH Direct Debit separately. No figure is quoted here because Stripe changes them and a stale number on this page would be a lie about your cost.

Every payment lands against one of the three structures an engagement can run on. Which one you are on was decided in scope, before anything got built, and it is written on the invoice.

Hourly

Decimal hours with the work period on every line, invoiced against work that already exists. You are paying for time already spent, and the invoice shows you what it went to.

Flat milestone

A fixed price against a named deliverable. A large build is split into tranches and each tranche is its own invoice, so you are never holding one bill for the whole project.

Monthly retainer

A recurring block for support and iteration. Extra hours are logged as pending items and roll onto the next renewal rather than arriving as a surprise invoice.

Rates are quoted against a scope rather than published, which has not changed.how the three structures work →terms, deposits, and what a retainer covers →

  1. Stripe emails the receipt as soon as the payment goes through. It arrives from Stripe rather than from me, so look there if your inbox files it somewhere strange.
  2. A card clears immediately. An ACH debit takes a few business days to settle, and the invoice stays open until it does. That is the bank being a bank, not me waiting on you.
  3. The invoice marks itself paid. You do not need to send me a confirmation and I do not need to send you one.
  4. Work starts, or continues. If the payment was a deposit against an approved scope, that is the point the scope becomes live.

What I can see

Not your card number and not your bank login. Those are typed on Stripe's pages, on Stripe's domain, and this site has no field to type them into and no server to send them to. What comes back to me is the amount, the last four digits, and whether it worked. On your statement the charge reads CONSULTED BY KENOUGH.

Something looks wrong

Do not pay an invoice you cannot place. Wrong amount, wrong scope, or a bill you do not recognize: email me first. Fixing an invoice before it is paid takes two minutes, and after it is paid it takes a refund.

Ask me about an invoice

ken.valenzuela@consultedbykenough.io · replies within two business days