When you set up fees with a monthly fee period but quarterly or annual billing, the way discounts appear in the fee table can look unexpected. This article explains why it happens, when it's handled automatically, and how to structure your fees when it isn't.

Common Paper's discount system mirrors how Stripe handles discounts: a discount applies once per billing cycle, not once per fee period. This distinction matters when your billing period is longer than your fee period.

For example, if you set fees as $3,000/month billed annually, your customer receives one invoice per year for $36,000. If you add a flat $1,000 discount, that discount applies to each annual invoice - your customer gets $1,000 off the yearly bill, not $1,000 off each month. The fee table tries to display all amounts on a monthly basis, but a $1,000 annual discount doesn't translate neatly into a monthly figure, which is why the numbers can look off.

Common Paper automatically adjusts the fee table display when all of the following conditions are met:

In this scenario, Common Paper calculates the correct monthly equivalent by taking the total invoiced amount after the discount and dividing by the number of months in the billing period. For example, $100/month with a 10% discount billed annually displays as $90/month - which reflects what the customer actually pays each month on average.

If your discount is a flat dollar amount rather than a percentage, the automatic adjustment does not apply, and the fee table may display numbers that don't match your expectations.

This is not an error in your agreement. The actual invoice your customer receives will reflect the correct total. The issue is only with how the fee table preview represents the discount when fees and billing periods don't align.

The clearest fix is to match your fee period to your billing period. Instead of expressing fees monthly with a monthly discount, express everything annually.

Using the same example - $3,000/month with a $1,000/month discount billed annually - you would restructure as:

Here's what the configuration looks like:

And how it appears to your customer:

This approach produces a fee table that displays the correct amounts and is unambiguous to both parties. It also reflects exactly how Stripe will bill your customer.