Billing & payments
How selling works when Protocol keeps the ledger and you collect the money, subscriptions and renewals, tax rates, Stripe keys, in-app purchases, and what Protocol charges you.
Selling to your clients
Can a client pay me inside Protocol?
No. Protocol does not collect money. There is no checkout a client can pay through, on any product, and no action in the shop charges a card. You take the payment the way you already take it, by card link, transfer or cash, and record the sale. What the shop then does for you is everything else: access, expiry, session credits, installment schedules, invoices and reminders. See Refunds, cancellations and what moves the money.
How do I set up an auto-renewing subscription (e.g. bill every 2 weeks)?
On the purchase choose Subscription and set the billing interval and count: Weekly × 2 is every two weeks, Monthly × 2 every two months. Leave the expiry blank for an open-ended subscription, and don’t mark a renewing subscription time-limited, which forces an end date.
Be clear about what a renewal is: it does not charge anybody. Protocol moves the period forward, resets session credits, extends access and writes an invoice recorded as paid, because that invoice is the record that the cycle happened rather than a request for payment. Each cycle’s money is yours to take and yours to record. If a client stops paying, nothing stops on its own; you cancel or pause the purchase. See Subscriptions & renewals.
Why does my shop say Stripe isn’t integrated even after I added a key?
Both the publishable and the secret key are required, and the secret key is validated against Stripe when you save it. Use the test action, which calls Stripe and reports back which account it reached; if it names the wrong account, you have pasted keys from two different places, which is easy after rolling keys in Stripe.
Worth saying plainly, because it surprises people: connecting Stripe does not create a checkout. Protocol holds the keys and can confirm they work, and that is where it stops. See Shop settings.
How do I make one product tax-free when my shop has a default tax?
Create a separate 0% tax rate in Shop settings, name it something like “No tax”, and select it on the product. Leaving a product’s tax blank falls back to your default rate. A purchase records the rate it was sold under, so changing a rate later never rewrites old invoices.
My client says the payment link shows “expired” even though I just sent it. Why?
Protocol does not generate payment links, so this is a link from your own payment provider and the problem is on that side. Pasting such a link into Instagram or WhatsApp can make the app’s link preview pre-open the payment session, so it times out before the client taps it. Send the link by SMS or email instead, and have the client open it right away.
When a client buys a subscription inside the app, do they get program access automatically?
No, not today. On iOS the store takes the money and validates the receipt, but Protocol does not turn that into a purchase, so the client is charged and nothing appears in your shop: record the sale yourself and grant access as you would for any external payment. On Android the in-app purchase does not complete at all. See Products.
What Protocol charges you
Does Protocol bill me automatically?
Yes. Your own plan is a card-on-file subscription with Protocol, billed on its cycle with an invoice each time and nothing to do by hand. You can change the card or cancel any time. This is the one place in the product where a card really is charged, and it is you paying us rather than a client paying you.
Can I switch between monthly and annual billing?
Yes, with the monthly/yearly switch at the top of the plan screen. Paying for a year up front gives you two months free on Starter, Pro and Enterprise. See Your Protocol plan.
What uses AI credits, and how much do they cost?
AI actions, such as generating or editing workout and nutrition plans and weekly-report analysis, use metered credits. One credit is one token, and your plan includes an allowance each month: 0.25M on Free, 2.5M on Starter, 6M on Pro. Beyond that, extra credits are $10 per million, and only if you switch overage on; left off, AI features stop for the month rather than adding to your bill. Logging food by text or photo is a few hundred credits; a whole personalised 8-week programme is around 400,000. Full table in Your Protocol plan.
More in Shop & billing.