Stop chasing balances: collect them with a pay link

You can now collect an outstanding balance by sending the customer a secure link. They pay on a branded page with no login, the payment lands in your payment history and ledger, and you never touch the phone. Payment links are live in production and have already processed real customer balances.

✦ Key takeaways

Send a customer a secure pay link to collect any outstanding balance — no account, no login
Payments get a confirmation number, appear in your payment history, and flow through the Freebo ledger
Cards saved at deposit time can be charged later without the customer present

The balance problem every operator knows

Deposits are the easy part. A customer books a charter, pays a deposit online, and the trip is on the calendar. Then the balance comes due — and that’s where the work starts.

For most operators, collecting the rest means chasing. You call the customer and hope they pick up. You email and wait. You plan to run their card at the dock and hope they show up ready to pay. Meanwhile the money isn’t in your books, your outstanding balance is a guess, and a trip a week away still isn’t fully paid.

The deposit was frictionless. The balance shouldn’t be a phone call.

How pay links fix it

A pay link turns “please call me back with a card number” into a single message the customer can act on in seconds.

From any reservation with a balance owed, you open the Send pay-link panel. Copy the link and paste it into a text, or email it to the customer straight from the dashboard — the email carries a button that drops them right onto the payment page. Either way, the customer lands on a secure, branded page that shows exactly what’s owed. No Freebo account. No login. They pay by card, and the payment is recorded against the reservation with its own confirmation number.

The amount is always priced from Freebo’s ledger the moment the customer clicks — so it’s never stale and never something the customer can edit down. And because pay-link payments post through the ledger, your payment history, outstanding balance, and reports stay correct on their own. No reconciling a side channel.

Charge the deposit card without another link

There’s a second way to collect, and it’s even less work. When a customer pays a deposit, Freebo can save that card with their consent. When the balance comes due, you charge the saved card directly from the reservation — no new link, no waiting on the customer.

So you’ve got two clean routes depending on the situation. Send a link when you want the customer to pay on their own time. Charge the saved card when you’d rather just close it out. Both post to the same ledger, so whichever you pick, the books stay right.

Real payments, in production

This isn’t a preview. Pay links are live and have already collected real balances from real customers, each flowing through the ledger the same way an online deposit does.

If you’ve been carrying unpaid balances into trip week, this is the tool that clears them — without the phone.

Does the customer need an account to pay?

No. The pay link opens a secure hosted page with no login. The customer sees the amount owed and pays by card.

Where do pay-link payments show up?

In the reservation's payment history, alongside your other transactions. They flow through the Freebo ledger, so your outstanding balance and reports update automatically.

Can I collect a balance without sending a link at all?

Yes. If the customer consented to saving their card when they paid the deposit, you can charge the remaining balance directly from the reservation without them present.