Billing and agreements
How partners and clients pay for Handshake, where to find invoices, how to manage your card, and how you accept the Terms that govern your use of the platform.
What it is
Handshake charges a flat fee per seat, per month, billed through Stripe. The Billing area is where you see your invoices, download them, and manage the card on file. Alongside it sits the Terms and Conditions you accept to use the platform. This page covers both.
Why it exists
You are paying for sending capacity - one flat charge per seat per month - so you need a clear record of what you have been charged and when. No card is ever charged without a Handshake team member reviewing and approving the invoice first, so you will never see a surprise charge. The Terms set the ground rules, and the platform keeps a tamper-proof record of who accepted what and when.
Who can see it
| Area | Who sees it |
|---|---|
| Billing / Invoices | Agency partners and direct clients, each for their own account. Found under your own menu. |
| Card on file | The same account that owns the invoices. You add and replace your own card. |
| Terms acceptance | Every partner and client accepts on sign-up, and again when the Terms change. |
| Financial dashboards (costs, revenue, pricing, invoice approvals) | Admin only - the Handshake team. Partners and clients do not see these. |
How it works
How you are billed
Handshake charges a flat fee per seat, per month. Every active connected seat counts as one billable seat. Paused seats, free seats and free clients are excluded.
The per-seat rate depends on your agreement - larger accounts pay a lower rate per seat. The exact rate is set by the Handshake team, so your invoices reflect the rate you agreed rather than a single fixed number.
Billing runs monthly in advance: your first invoice charges a full month for your seats when your plan starts, and every month after that you are billed on the same date for that month's seats. If you add seats partway through a month, the new seats are charged pro-rata for the rest of that cycle, worked out automatically. If you remove seats, the change takes effect at your next monthly billing date.
The approval step before you're charged
Before any card is charged, a member of the Handshake team reviews and approves the invoice. This is a deliberate safeguard - no card is ever charged silently or by surprise. Once approved, Stripe processes the payment on the card on file automatically going forward, so you do not need to do anything each month once your account is set up.
Where to see invoices and payment
Open Billing in your account menu. There you will find your invoice history, with the period it covers, the amount, and its status:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Draft | Generated, waiting on Handshake's review before it can be charged. |
| Sent | Approved and issued - Stripe will attempt to charge the card on file. |
| Paid | Payment has gone through. |
| Overdue | Issued but not yet paid (for example, the card on file failed). |
Click any invoice to download it or open Stripe's own hosted copy for your records.
Managing your card
You can add or replace the card Handshake charges from Billing, using a secure form provided by Stripe - your card details never touch Handshake's own servers. You always have exactly one card on file: adding a new one makes it the card used going forward, and you cannot remove your only card, only replace it.
Accepting the Terms (clickwrap)
When you sign up as a partner or client you tick a box to accept Handshake's Terms and Conditions. You can read the current Terms any time at the public /terms page, with the Privacy Policy, Data Processing Addendum, and Cookie Policy alongside them.
Acceptance is recorded against your account: The version of the Terms you accepted, the date and time, who accepted, and the IP address it came from. That record is what proves the agreement, so it is never deleted.
When the Terms change, you see a soft amber banner the next time you open the portal: "We've updated our terms. Review the latest version before accepting." It links to the new Terms and gives you an Accept button. The banner does not block you from working - you can dismiss it - but it returns on your next visit until you accept the new version.
What the agreement records
Separately from the platform Terms, some accounts are set up with a specific service agreement that captures the deal itself - service type, fees, caps, and payment terms. These are sent out by the Handshake team and signed on a dedicated agreement page: You scroll through the full document, tick a box confirming you have read it and have authority to sign, and click Accept Agreement.
When signed, the agreement stores a complete snapshot - the signer's name, title and email, the timestamp, the IP address and browser, and a tamper-proof fingerprint of the exact text that was agreed. Like the Terms record, signed agreements are kept permanently (older ones are marked superseded, never erased) so there is always a clean audit trail.
Limits and what to watch out for
- Every charge goes through Handshake review first. Nothing is ever charged to your card without a Handshake team member approving the invoice.
- Pausing a seat stops its billing. A paused seat is not charged while it stays paused, and it is not billed again until it is resumed. See Platform structure.
- You can only have one card on file. Adding a new card replaces the old one; you cannot remove your only card without replacing it first.
- The Terms re-accept banner keeps coming back until you accept. It will not lock you out, but it is there for a reason - read the new version.
- Financial dashboards are admin-only. The costs, revenue, pricing, and invoice-approval pages belong to the Handshake team; partners and clients manage their own billing through the Billing page described above.