Draft, not legal advice. Product-specific wording to merge into the FSB member templates before launch (see README.md). Last updated: 20 October 2026 (draft)

PaidStraight terms of service

These terms are a contract between [OPERATOR LEGAL NAME] ("we", "us") and the business that signs up for PaidStraight ("you"). Please read them before you use PaidStraight. If you do not agree, do not use it.

1. Who we are

PaidStraight is run by [OPERATOR LEGAL NAME], [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. [Company number: [COMPANY NUMBER], if a company.] [VAT number: [VAT NUMBER], if registered.] Email: [CONTACT EMAIL].

[Solicitor to confirm: the operator details above meet the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 reg 6 and, if the operator is a company, the Companies Act trading disclosure rules.]

2. What PaidStraight is, and what it is not

PaidStraight is software that helps you chase your own unpaid invoices. You add invoices. PaidStraight sends reminder emails to your clients in your business name, with replies going to you. For clients you mark as a business, it can also:

• work out statutory interest and fixed compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, and add them to a final notice if you switch this on;
• fill in a letter-before-action template for you to check, edit and send yourself. PaidStraight does not send it;
• link to official information about small claims in each part of the UK. PaidStraight does not prepare court documents, contact a court or act for you.

PaidStraight is not a lawyer, a law firm, a debt collector or a legal service. We do not give legal advice. We do not collect money, hold money for you, contact courts, file claims, or act for you in any dispute. Everything PaidStraight produces is a template that you check, change if needed, and send or use yourself, in your own name.

If you are not sure whether you can claim something, or how to make a court claim, get advice from a solicitor or another qualified adviser. The Small Business Commissioner (smallbusinesscommissioner.gov.uk) publishes free guidance for small businesses on late payment.

3. Business use only

PaidStraight is for businesses only. By signing up you confirm that:

• you are acting for the purposes of your trade, business or profession, as a sole trader, partnership, company or other organisation;
• you are at least 18; and
• if you sign up for an organisation, you have authority to accept these terms for it.

Consumer protection laws that apply only to consumers do not apply to this contract. [Solicitor to confirm: the effect of this clause, and whether any statutory consumer rights could still apply to a sole trader who signs up.]

4. Your account

• Keep your sign-in details secure. You are responsible for everything done through your account.
• You can invite other people from your business. You are responsible for what they do in PaidStraight and for removing their access when they leave.
• Tell us at once at [CONTACT EMAIL] if you think someone has used your account without permission.

5. Your responsibilities for what is sent in your name

Every email, final notice and letter before action is sent or used by you, in your business name. You are responsible for them. In particular, you are responsible for:

1. Accurate invoices. The amounts, dates, invoice numbers and client details you enter or import must be correct, and the money must actually be owed to you.
2. Client classification. You must mark each client correctly as a business or a consumer. Statutory interest, compensation, final notices and letters before action are only for business clients. If you are not sure, mark the client as a consumer, or leave it unset.
3. Checking the interest claim. Statutory interest does not apply if your contract with the client sets its own remedy for late payment, or in some other cases. You must switch statutory interest on yourself, and you must check that it applies before you send a final notice.
4. Every message and letter. You choose the sequence and the wording. You must read every formal letter before you approve it. You must not send anything you know or suspect to be wrong.
5. Disputes. If your client disputes the invoice, you must pause chasing or change your messages to deal with the dispute (see the acceptable use policy).
6. Stopping when paid. Mark invoices paid, part-paid or disputed promptly. PaidStraight stops chasing an invoice when you mark it paid. It cannot know about payments you have not recorded.
7. Your own data protection duties. You are the controller of your clients' personal data. You must have a lawful basis to use it and must tell your clients how you use it. Our data processing agreement (dpa.md) forms part of these terms.

6. Acceptable use

Our acceptable use policy (acceptable-use.md) forms part of these terms. You must follow it. In short: chase only your own genuine business debts, be polite and accurate, never chase consumers through the formal steps, and never pretend to be a court, solicitor or debt collector.

7. Fair use

There is no limit on invoices or users. Each account may send up to 1,000 reminder emails a month. This is about 30 times what a typical customer sends. If you regularly need more, contact us. We may pause sending above the limit until the next month, and we will tell you if we do.

PaidStraight also enforces some limits for everyone. It keeps at least 3 days between contacts about the same invoice and only sends during your working hours on working days. You cannot switch these off.

8. Free trial

• New accounts get a 30-day free trial. We do not ask for card details.
• Reminders send for real during the trial once you start a sequence.
• We email you 7 days before the trial ends.
• When the trial ends, sending pauses. We do not delete your data straight away (see section 12).
• One trial per business. We may refuse a new trial if we reasonably think the same business has had one before.

9. Price and payment

• PaidStraight costs £19 a month or £190 a year. Prices include VAT.
• Our order process is conducted by our online reseller Paddle.com. Paddle.com is the Merchant of Record for all our orders. Paddle provides all customer service inquiries and handles returns. Paddle's own buyer terms apply to your purchase (paddle.com/legal/buyer-terms).
• Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each month or year until you cancel.
• We may change the price. We will give you at least 30 days' notice by email. The new price applies from your next renewal after the notice ends. You can cancel before then.

[Solicitor to confirm: the Paddle wording above is the text Paddle requires sellers to include; check it is still current when the live Paddle account is set up.]

10. Cancelling

• You can cancel at any time in the app, under Billing. Cancelling stops renewal. You keep access until the end of the period you have paid for.
• Monthly plans are not refunded for part months.
• Yearly plans cancelled within 30 days of the first payment are refunded pro rata for the unused months. After 30 days, yearly plans are not refunded. Paddle processes refunds.
• When your paid period ends, sending stops and the data rules in section 12 apply.

11. Suspension and termination by us

We may suspend sending, or suspend or close your account, if:

• you break these terms or the acceptable use policy;
• we reasonably believe PaidStraight is being used to harass, mislead or threaten anyone, or to chase debts that are not genuinely owed to you;
• we receive a credible complaint about messages sent from your account and need time to look into it;
• your use risks the reputation of our sending domain, for example high bounce or complaint rates; or
• payment fails and is not put right within 14 days.

Where we can, we will tell you first and give you a chance to put things right. In serious cases, such as threats or harassment, we may suspend sending straight away and tell you afterwards. If we close your account for serious or repeated breach, we will not refund fees already paid.

We may also end these terms for any reason by giving you at least 30 days' notice. If we do, we will refund any fees paid for the period after the account closes.

12. Your data: export and deletion

• You own the data you put into PaidStraight. You can export your clients, invoices and email history as CSV at any time.
• After your trial ends, or after a paid subscription ends, we keep your data for 90 days so you can come back or export it. Then we delete it.
• Deleted data may stay in our encrypted backups for up to 8 more weeks until those backups expire. We do not restore it except to recover from a fault.
• You can ask us to delete your account sooner by emailing [CONTACT EMAIL].
• Our privacy policy (privacy.md) explains how we use personal data about you. Our data processing agreement (dpa.md) explains how we handle your clients' personal data for you.

13. Our service

• We aim to keep PaidStraight available and working, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may take it offline for maintenance.
• Emails may be delayed, blocked or marked as spam by the recipient's provider. We do not promise that any email will be delivered or read.
• We work hard to keep the statutory interest rate table and court information up to date. Rates and court rules change. Check figures before you rely on them, especially in letters before action and claims.
• We may change or improve features. If we remove a feature that is central to the service, we will tell you and you can cancel with a pro rata refund of any prepaid yearly fee.

14. Our liability to you

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit.

Subject to that:

• We are not liable for: any debt you do not recover; any delay in being paid; the outcome of any dispute or court claim; any court fees, costs orders or interest awarded against you; loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data; or any indirect or consequential loss.
• We are not liable for loss caused by information you entered, by how you classified a client, by messages or letters you approved or sent, or by your breach of these terms.
• Our total liability to you in any 12-month period, for all claims of any kind, is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in that period and £100.

[Solicitor to confirm: these limits are reasonable under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (s.3 and s.11 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland; Part II, including s.17 and s.24, for Scotland) for a £19 a month standard-terms product.]

15. Your liability to us

You will cover our reasonable losses and costs (including reasonable legal fees) arising from a claim by a third party, or action by a regulator, caused by:

• messages, letters or claims sent or made in your name through PaidStraight;
• incorrect invoices or client classification; or
• your breach of the acceptable use policy or data protection law.

[Solicitor to confirm: whether this indemnity is proportionate and enforceable against sole traders on standard terms.]

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For changes that matter, we will email you at least 30 days before they take effect. If you do not agree, you can cancel before then and we will refund any prepaid yearly fee for the unused period after the change. Minor changes (for example, fixing typos or reflecting a new address) take effect when we publish them. The date at the top shows the current version.

17. Other terms

• Notices. We send notices to the email address on your account. You send notices to [CONTACT EMAIL].
• Transfer. We may transfer this contract to another business that takes over PaidStraight. We will tell you. You may not transfer it without our written agreement.
• Events outside our control. We are not liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control, such as hosting or email provider outages.
• Whole agreement. These terms, the acceptable use policy, the data processing agreement and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between us about PaidStraight.
• Third parties. Nobody else has rights under these terms. [Solicitor to confirm: Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 exclusion wording, and the Scottish equivalent under the Contract (Third Party Rights) (Scotland) Act 2017, depending on governing law.]
• Severance. If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a right straight away, we can still enforce it later.

18. Governing law and courts

[Solicitor to confirm: England and Wales vs Scotland. The operator is based in Scotland. Options: (a) Scots law and the Scottish courts; (b) the law of England and Wales and its courts; (c) the operator's home law with non-exclusive jurisdiction so users can sue locally. Consider which is cheaper for the operator to defend, and Paddle's buyer terms, which are governed by English law.]

These terms are governed by the law of [JURISDICTION]. The courts of [JURISDICTION] have [exclusive / non-exclusive] jurisdiction.

19. Contact

[OPERATOR LEGAL NAME], [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. Email: [CONTACT EMAIL].