Changing your plan

Only the owner can change the plan. Every billing function — choosing a plan, cancelling, reading invoices — rejects every other role. Employees also see no prompt to change the plan.

Step by step

1. Open Settings → Subscription & billing. On a locked page such as Reports, Upgrade → opens the same selection right where you are.
2. Choose the billing interval: Monthly or Annually — 2 months free.
3. Set the number under How many employees?. The amount for each plan updates as you type.
4. Click Choose Starter or Choose Pro.
5. For your first paid plan you are taken to Stripe's secure payment page. The number you set is booked, but at least the number of employees who are already active — your first invoice starts with it. If a subscription already exists, it is switched directly — without a second payment page and without a second charge.

The result: When upgrading, the change takes effect immediately. Unlocked features are available without signing in again. The subscribed plan in the database is not set by the click, but by the confirmation Stripe sends to Zeitflex — this usually takes a few seconds. Do not click a plan a second time during this period.

Upgrading

When upgrading to a higher plan with the same billing interval, the difference for the rest of the current term is charged pro rata. It appears as a separate line item on your next regular invoice — nothing is charged now, and no interim invoice is created.

If the billing interval changes as well (for example from monthly to annual payment), Stripe settles the difference too; you will see the amount and date on the invoice.

If you chose Starter or Pro at sign-up, you already went through checkout with a trial. If you only switch from the free plan later, you get the remaining part of the trial: it runs for 14 days from when the business was created, not from the switch. If you switch on day ten, you have four more days without a charge; if you switch after day 14, you pay from now on.

Downgrading

When downgrading, all data is kept. What you lose is access to the respective features — not what you have created with them.

Switching to Free is technically a cancellation: the subscription continues until the end of the paid term and is not renewed after that. The way there is the same button as for cancelling — see Payment and invoices.

Export before downgrading

Download beforehand whatever you can no longer generate on the smaller plan:

• CSV and PDF of the closed months
• DATEV files, if you are downgrading from Pro
• the analyses from the reports that you need regularly

When the change takes effect

• Upgrading takes effect immediately. With the same billing interval, the pro rata difference appears on the next invoice; when the billing interval changes, you will see the amount and date on the invoice.
• Downgrading takes effect at the end of the paid term. Until then you keep the features you have paid for and continue to pay as before.
• Annual payment → monthly payment counts as a downgrade and likewise only takes effect at the end of the term.
• The plan trumps the billing interval: “Starter annually” → “Pro monthly” is an upgrade and takes effect immediately; “Pro annually” → “Starter monthly” takes effect at the end of the term.

While a change is scheduled, Subscription & billing shows this as a sentence with a date: “A plan change is scheduled for …. Until then you keep your current plan and continue to pay as before; the switch happens automatically with the next invoice.”

What you see in the menu after the change

After a downgrade, the menu items of the features you no longer have do not disappear — for you as the owner they stay in place and carry a lock with the name of the plan that includes them (for example “Reports · PRO”). If you hover over it, the tooltip shows the price per active employee per month. The page behind it still opens and uses a card to explain which plan includes the feature — and that your data is kept in full in any case.

This is how it looks for the individual items:

• Month-end close, Reports, Working-time check are fixed items and carry the lock as soon as the plan does not include them.
• Shift plan and Projects are modules. If the module is switched on in your business, the item appears in the menu with a lock. If the module is switched off, the item is missing entirely — then it is not about the plan, but about the setting in the “Modules” section.
• Mini-job never carries a lock: the Mini-job monitor is included in every plan.

Only you as the owner see the lock. Managers and employees are not shown the locked items at all — anyone who may not change the plan should not see a call to buy either. Unsolicited plan notices on working pages can be dismissed; after that Zeitflex stays silent on that matter for 14 days. There are no invented deadlines: the only deadline such a notice may name is the end of the trial, because that date is actually stored.

The billing date stays the same

A plan change with the same billing interval does not move your billing date. If you subscribed on the 1st and upgrade on the 17th, you still get the next invoice on the 1st — with the pro rata difference for the days since the change as a separate line item. Zeitflex passes the change to Stripe with the explicit instruction to leave the billing cycle unchanged.

When the billing interval changes, we do not promise this: how Stripe bills a switch from monthly to annual payment, you will see with amount and date on the invoice.

Downgrading works differently: the current term stays exactly as it was paid, and the smaller plan starts on the day the next term begins anyway. No credit note and no credit balance are created — you have paid for the term and use it to the end.

The number of seats billed is independent of the plan change: it follows the number of your active employees and is reconciled daily. When upgrading, it stays as it is at the moment of the switch — if fewer employees are active than seats are booked, this creates no credit, and the smaller number applies from the next invoice; if more are active than are booked, the next daily reconciliation takes over the higher number. When downgrading, the scheduled smaller plan takes over the number of seats booked on the day of your click — that is, the result of the last daily reconciliation before it, not the number of employees active at that moment. The smaller plan starts with this number of seats; if your workforce changes between the click and the switch, this only takes effect from the invoice after that. With annual payment, that means only from the following annual invoice — the first annual invoice in the smaller plan is based on the number of seats on the day of your click. During the trial, the booked number is never lower than the one chosen at the start. More on this under Payment and invoices.

Reversing or changing a switch

• Cancelling a scheduled downgrade: There is no separate button for this, and the previous plan cannot be clicked again — it is shown in the selection as Active. Clicking a higher plan or annual payment, however, also cancels the scheduled change: before every upgrade, Zeitflex releases the scheduled plan at Stripe, otherwise at the end of the term it would downgrade the newly subscribed plan again. If you simply want to stay on your current plan without upgrading, contact us via Support — no money has changed hands by then.
• Withdrawing a cancellation: As long as the paid term is still running, Subscription & billing has the button Withdraw cancellation. The subscription then continues as normal. If the term has already ended, the only option is to subscribe again via the plan selection.
• Switching again: Upgrading while a cancellation is scheduled also cancels the cancellation.

Frequently asked questions

I clicked Pro, but the menu still says Starter — what is going on?

The plan is not set by the click, but by the confirmation Stripe sends to Zeitflex. This usually takes a few seconds; after you return from checkout, the page fetches the status twice by itself. If it stays that way for longer, reload the page. If the confirmation never arrives, a daily reconciliation reads the status directly from Stripe and corrects it — this way a permanent state becomes at most one day. If Stripe was not reachable at the moment of the click, Zeitflex has not booked anything and says so: “Nothing was booked and nothing was changed — please try again in a minute.”

We have 120 staff and want to move from Starter to Pro — why does that not work?

The plan selection in the app is limited to 100 active employees. Above that, Enterprise with individual terms applies; the message names the contact address. Your current subscription is not affected, and time tracking continues.

We are downgrading to Free for the seasonal break — what happens to the seasonal workers?

Nothing you need to fear: everyone created stays active, their hours are kept, and they keep clocking in. Zeitflex does not set anyone to inactive. Only new people cannot be created on the free plan while the one seat is taken. Closed months stay closed; however, the free plan no longer generates the export files for them — download them before downgrading.

I want to switch from monthly to annual payment — when does the annual price apply?

Immediately. Switching to annual payment counts as an upgrade and is treated like one: the subscription is switched. Stripe settles the difference; you will see the amount and date on the invoice. The annual price is ten times the monthly price — two months are free.

Still stuck?

If you want to stop altogether, there is a different route: Cancel your account and take your data. For questions about a specific change, contact us via Support — give the date and time of the click, and we will find the transaction in the log. What the plans include in detail is explained under Plans and prices.