1. The short version
- Nothing is charged during your seven-day trial. Cancel before it ends and you never pay us anything.
- Cancel a monthly plan and it runs to the end of the month you have paid for. We do not refund part of a month.
- Changed your mind about an annual plan? Tell us within 14 days of the payment and we refund it in full.
- Charged twice, or charged by mistake? We refund it in full, every time.
- If we withdraw Costrix, we refund whatever you have paid for and not had.
The rest of this page is the same thing in detail. It sits alongside our terms of service, and where the two ever disagree the terms win.
[TODO: Craig to confirm every refund position on this page before launch — in particular the 14-day annual window in section 4, the no-part-month rule in section 3, and the working-day window quoted in section 8. They are drafted as the ordinary B2B software position, not as decisions anyone has actually taken]
2. The free trial
Every account starts with a seven-day trial of the plan you chose. We take your card details up front, through Stripe, but no money is taken during the trial.
If you cancel at any point in those seven days, no payment is ever made and there is nothing to refund. If you do nothing, the trial converts on the last day to the plan and billing period you picked at signup, and the first payment is taken then.
3. Monthly plans
A monthly subscription is paid for the month ahead. When you cancel, the subscription stops renewing and Costrix carries on working normally until the end of the period you have already paid for — so you get everything you paid for.
We do not refund part of a month you have started. [TODO: Craig to confirm: no part-month refund on monthly plans]
4. Annual plans
An annual subscription is paid a year in advance. If you decide within 14 days of an annual payment — the first one or a renewal — that Costrix is not for you, tell us and we will refund that payment in full and close the subscription.
After those 14 days we do not refund the rest of the year. You keep full use of Costrix until the year you paid for runs out, and you can cancel at any time so it does not renew. [TODO: Craig to confirm: 14 days from an annual payment for a full refund, no pro-rata refund after that]
Costrix is sold to businesses rather than to consumers, so the cancellation rights in the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 do not normally apply to it. The 14 days above is something we offer anyway, not something we are told to offer. [TODO: solicitor to confirm this characterisation, and whether a sole trader signing up could still count as a consumer]
5. Adding and removing people
Costrix is priced per person who can sign in. When your admin adds someone in the middle of a billing period, Stripe works out the part of the period they are there for and puts that amount on your next invoice. When your admin switches someone off, the same arithmetic runs the other way and leaves a credit on your account, which comes off your next invoice.
So a seat you stop using is money you get back — as credit against your next invoice, not as a payment to your card, and so long as the subscription carries on to reach that invoice. The Starter plan is sold with a three-user minimum, so it is always billed for at least three seats however few people are active.
6. Duplicate or mistaken charges
If you have been charged twice for the same period, charged after cancelling, or charged an amount that does not match the plan you are on, that is our mistake and we refund it in full. Tell us and we will put it right — you do not need to argue for it.
7. If the service ends or is withdrawn
If we withdraw Costrix altogether, or we end your agreement for a reason that is not your fault, we refund any period you have paid for and not had. That promise is in section 12 of our terms of service as well as here.
If we end your agreement because these terms have been seriously broken and not put right, we do not refund the rest of the period.
Either way your data is not held hostage. When a subscription ends the account becomes read-only rather than closed: everyone can still sign in, still see every receipt, expense, approval and statement, and still export the lot as a CSV.
8. How a refund is paid
Refunds go back through Stripe to the card that paid, because that is the only route we have — we never see or hold your card number. We cannot pay a refund to a different card or by bank transfer.
Once we send it, how long it takes to appear on your statement is your bank’s timing rather than ours; five to ten working days is usual. [TODO: Craig to confirm the working-day window quoted to customers here]
If your payment carried VAT, the refund carries the same VAT back with it. [TODO: confirm the VAT position on prices and refunds with an accountant — this sentence must match the VAT wording in section 5 of the terms of service]
9. A payment that fails
If a payment fails, Stripe retries it over the following days and your account carries on working while it does. If it never succeeds, the account goes read-only — still readable, still exportable, nothing deleted. There is nothing to refund in that situation, because the money never left your account.
10. How to cancel, and how to ask for a refund
To cancel, an admin opens the billing page in Costrix and goes through to the Stripe billing portal, which is where your card, your invoices and the cancel button live. There is no notice period and no cancellation fee.
To ask for a refund, email hello@costrix.app from an address we will recognise, and tell us your company name, roughly when the payment was taken, and what happened. You do not need an invoice number, though it helps if you have one to hand.
We will reply and tell you what we are going to do. [TODO: Craig to set the reply time promised here, e.g. within five working days, and the time within which an agreed refund is sent]
If you are not happy with the answer, reply and say so — we would far rather sort it out than leave you unhappy. Our postal address for a formal notice about a payment is [TODO: postal address for formal notices].
11. Changes to this policy
When this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it. The policy that applies to a payment is the one published on the day the payment was taken, so a change here never takes away a refund you were already entitled to.