How-to guide
Manage billing and upgrades
Follow the complete Slack workflow to manage billing and upgrades, including prerequisites, decisions, and recovery steps.
Goal
Manage your organization plan, usage, checkout availability, and billing-admin privacy requests from Settings in Slack. Commercial distribution authorization and the canonical catalog determine whether paid checkout is available.
When to use this
Use this workflow when you need to:
- Review usage against plan limits (scheduled posts, AI generations, brands, workspaces)
- Review Free Evaluation, Starter monthly, and Team monthly offers and whether paid checkout is currently authorized
- Open invoices, billing history, or payment methods in Stripe after paid distribution is authorized
- Fix blocked features after a limit or past-due status
- Start organization data export or deletion requests as a billing admin
Billing applies at the organization level. It is shared across Slack workspaces and brands in the organization, not billed per workspace or brand separately.
Before you begin
You must be the billing owner or have billing management access for the organization.
If you are responding to a blocked action in Create or another work center, note the upgrade or limit message shown before you open billing. That message tells you whether the block is a quota limit or a payment issue.
Steps
Open billing
- Type
/social, choose Settings, then Billing & Plan under Billing/Admin. - Alternatively, from App Home upgrade prompts, choose View plans or Manage billing when a limit or unavailable feature blocks an action.
The billing surface opens from the settings hub with your organization context.
Review usage
- Open Usage from the billing area.
- Compare scheduled posts, AI generations, brands, and workspaces against your plan limits.
Use this view before you upgrade so you know which limit triggered a block.
Review plans and checkout availability
- Choose Upgrade or select a plan row to review plan previews. Your current plan is highlighted.
- When commercial distribution is unavailable, paid checkout stops without creating a payment method, subscription, or automatic conversion.
- After commercial distribution is explicitly authorized and provider facts are confirmed, a billing owner may pick Starter monthly or Team monthly and complete checkout from the link Slash Social sends in a DM.
If paid launch authority or provider confirmation is unavailable, Slash Social shows generic contact guidance instead of inventing a checkout path.
Free Evaluation billing boundary
Free Evaluation requires no card and cannot convert automatically to a paid plan. Paid values remain visibly preview-only until commercial distribution and exact provider facts are authorized. New Starter and Team subscriptions are monthly, with no new trial and no public expansion purchases.
Any authorized checkout must disclose its price, monthly cadence, charge timing, cancellation path, taxes, and applicable legal terms before confirmation. Existing subscription add-ons and historical billing remain observable, while cancellation, duplicate-charge correction, prepaid periods, and refund requests follow the Billing and Refund Policy, checkout-specific disclosures, and any signed agreement.
Manage invoices and payment method
- Open Billing history when you need past invoices inside Slack.
- Open the Customer portal when you need payment method updates or Stripe-hosted invoice management.
Portal and history modals should load without Stripe configuration errors when billing is set up correctly.
Handle past due or blocked features
When billing status is past due, paid features and expensive operations stop until payment is fixed.
- Open the Customer portal from billing.
- Resolve the payment issue in Stripe.
- Return to Slack, reopen Billing & Plan, and refresh App Home. Retry the blocked action after Slack shows the updated billing status.
See Billing is past due for symptom-specific steps.
Organization privacy requests (billing admin)
Billing admins can also run organization privacy actions from billing-related settings:
- Request organization deletion: confirm in the GDPR modal (subject to legal hold and cooldown rules)
- Cancel organization deletion: while a request is still pending
- Export organization data: start a data export job
- Request user deletion: submit a specific Slack user ID with confirmation
- Cancel user deletion: while a user deletion request is pending
Legal hold place and lift actions may also be available from App Home for billing admins when your organization uses those controls.
Each action sends confirmation feedback and refreshes App Home when it completes.
Confirm it worked
When paid distribution is unavailable: A paid-plan action shows the Free Evaluation boundary and does not create a Stripe session, collect a card, or change the plan.
After an authorized upgrade: Previously blocked limits clear only for launch-confirmed capabilities on your new plan. Usage counters reflect the upgraded plan. If capability launch evidence is unavailable, Slack shows generic contact guidance instead of naming a target plan.
Checkout: You receive a DM with a checkout link when session creation succeeds. Completing payment updates plan access after Stripe confirms the subscription.
Portal and history: Modals load invoice and payment data without configuration errors.
Privacy requests: Confirmation feedback appears in Slack. Pending deletion or export states show in billing or App Home until they complete or are canceled.
Troubleshooting
Paid checkout is unavailable: This is expected when launch authority or provider confirmation is missing. Free Evaluation requires no card and will not convert automatically. Review the Billing and Refund Policy or contact support if the message does not match your organization status.
Upgrade denied or checkout creation fails after paid distribution is authorized: Read the error modal in Slack. Confirm you are the billing owner or have billing management access. Retry from Billing & Plan or View plans.
Limits still block after payment: Wait for Stripe webhook processing, then refresh App Home. If blocks persist, open Usage and compare counters to Usage limits.
Past due blocks persist: Fix payment in the Customer portal, then see Billing is past due.
GDPR action rejected: Legal hold, cooldown, or duplicate-request rules may block deletion or export. Read the modal message and cancel or wait as instructed before retrying.
No checkout DM: Use the guidance shown in Slack. An absent session is not evidence of an unlisted or custom checkout path.