Active-adult billing: pay for the people you shepherd

Who counts as an active adult?

An active adult is a person in your people list who meets all four conditions: they are marked as an adult, their status is active, they are not archived, and you have chosen to count them. If any one of those is not true, they do not count toward your plan.

You make the counting decision yourself, person by person. Every person record has a billing setting with three options: count toward the active-adult tier, exclude from it, or decide later. FlockConnect never guesses. There is no age cutoff and no birthdate logic, so a person is a child or an adult because you said so, not because of an algorithm.

• An active adult is a person marked adult, active, counted, and not archived. All four, or they do not count.
• Children, archived, inactive, manually excluded, and unreviewed people never count. New and imported people default to decide later.
• Six plans by band: Starter (any size), Small (up to 150), Growing (151 to 500), Established (501 to 1,200), Large (1,201 to 2,500), Network (2,501 and up, or multi-site).
• Outgrowing a band shows a soft upgrade nudge on the billing page. No automatic plan change, no hard block.
• The 14-day trial collects a card at checkout but charges nothing until the trial ends. With no card on file, the subscription cancels instead of billing you.
• Every plan has monthly SMS and Collie AI allotments, with one warning email at 80 percent and never an overage charge. Collie is advisory: a person approves everything it drafts.
• Billing is owner-only with multi-factor authentication, and all plan changes go through the Stripe portal.

Who never counts?

Children are excluded from the billing count by default. So are archived people, people marked inactive, and anyone you have manually excluded. Archiving a person removes them from the count regardless of their other settings.

New people default to not counting. A person you add by hand starts as decide later, and people who arrive through CSV import or Planning Center sync start the same way. Until you review someone and mark them as a counted adult, they are not part of your bill. The default always errs in your favor.

What are the six plans?

There are six plans, sized by active-adult bands. Starter fits any church size as an operator's choice and covers the care-logging core: people, households, groups and ministries, interaction logging, and care reports. Small covers up to 150 active adults, Growing covers 151 to 500, Established covers 501 to 1,200, Large covers 1,201 to 2,500, and Network covers 2,501 and up, or multi-site churches, with a quote from our team.

Collie AI, Forms, SMS messaging, Planning Center sync, calendar sync, analytics, and exports unlock at Small and above. Every plan comes in a monthly or annual cadence, and current prices live on the pricing page.

What happens when we outgrow our band?

Nothing automatic. FlockConnect tracks your reviewed active-adult count, and if it has grown past your plan's band, the billing page shows a soft nudge: a note naming the plan that fits your size, with a button that opens the Stripe portal.

That nudge is the whole mechanism. FlockConnect never changes your plan for you, never blocks access at a band boundary, and never adds a surprise charge. You move to the next plan when you decide to, through the Stripe portal, and you can downgrade the same way if your count comes back down.

How does the 14-day trial work?

Every plan starts with a 14-day trial, with full access to that plan's features for the whole trial. Creating your FlockConnect account requires no card at all. When you pick a plan, Stripe Checkout asks for a card up front, but nothing is charged that day: your card is only billed when the trial ends.

About three days before the trial ends, account owners get a reminder email so the date never surprises you. If there is no payment method on file when the trial ends, the subscription is simply canceled rather than charged. You can add or update a card any time from the billing page, which opens the Stripe portal's payment method screen.

How do the monthly SMS and AI allotments work?

Each plan includes a monthly allotment of SMS segments and Collie AI generations, and the counters reset at the start of each calendar month (UTC). Small includes 250 SMS segments and 1,000 AI generations, Growing includes 1,000 and 3,000, Established includes 2,500 and 8,000, and Large includes 5,000 and 16,000. Starter includes neither, and Network has custom SMS volume with uncapped AI. Collie stays advisory either way: a person reviews and approves anything it drafts before it goes anywhere.

When you reach 80 percent of an allotment, the account owner and admins get one warning email for that month. At 100 percent the plan stops there for the month: FlockConnect blocks further sends and generations rather than billing you for overage. Pending SMS assessment reminders are deferred, not failed, so they go out once the new month's allotment opens.

Who can manage billing?

Billing is account-owner-only, and the billing page requires multi-factor authentication. Admins who open it see a clear deny page instead of billing details. On the page itself, the owner sees the current plan and its status, the reviewed active-adult count, recent invoices as hosted Stripe links, and a plan picker when the church has no live subscription.

Every change to the plan itself happens in the Stripe-hosted customer portal: switching plans, updating the payment method, managing invoices, and canceling. FlockConnect links you there from the billing page and never asks for card details inside the app, so your payment information stays with Stripe.