Using Invoice Lookup Recovery for Pay Now links

Invoice Lookup Recovery helps customers continue to payment when a public Pay Now link does not uniquely match an invoice. Customers verify the invoice using the invoice number, invoice date, and original invoice total, then continue to a secure guest checkout page.

What Invoice Lookup Recovery does

You can:

• Automatically redirect customers to the recovery page when a supported Pay Now lookup fails.
• Share the recovery page URL directly with customers.

Before you begin

• Confirm that your public Pay Now link looks up invoices by invoice number.
• Prepare optional instructions that explain where customers can find their invoice details.
• Confirm the portal domain you will use if you plan to share the recovery page directly.

Turn on automatic redirect

1. Open Settings in Benji Pays.
2. Click Customer Portal settings.
3. Scroll down to Portal and Pay Now link settings.
4. Under Recommended for additional security, enable Invoice Lookup.
5. Optionally add custom instructions that will appear on the recovery page.
6. Save your changes.

Enable Invoice Lookup Recovery under Portal and Pay Now link settings.

What the customer enters

On the recovery page, the customer enters:

1. Invoice number
2. Invoice date, as shown on the invoice
3. Original invoice total, not the remaining balance

Customers verify the invoice number, invoice date, and original invoice total.

The details must match a single payable invoice. If more than one invoice has the same number, or the date or total does not match, the customer sees a generic verification error and no payment page opens.

Confirm the customer workflow

1. Open a supported Pay Now link that does not match an invoice.
2. Confirm that the customer is redirected to the invoice lookup page.
3. Enter the invoice number, invoice date, and original invoice total.
4. Select Continue to payment.
5. Confirm that a secure guest checkout page opens for the verified invoice.

Share the recovery page directly

Every merchant portal has a recovery page at:

https://<your-portal-domain>/portal/invoice-lookup

If your portal name appears in the path instead of the hostname, use:

https://pay.example.com/portal/<your-portal-name>/invoice-lookup

You can share this URL even when automatic redirect is turned off. Useful places to share it include:

• Invoice emails or payment reminder templates
• Your website's Pay an invoice page
• Support replies when a customer's original Pay Now link does not work

Optional query parameters

Which payment links are affected

Automatic redirect applies to generic Pay Now links and Invoice Specific links that look up an invoice by number.

• Generic links: /pay and /pay/{currency}. After verification, Benji Pays selects the gateway using the usual portal defaults for the invoice currency and customer.
• Invoice Specific links: gateway hash (/p), QuickBooks Online (/qbopay), Xero (/xeropay), and QuickBooks Desktop (/qbdpay). The gateway from the original link is preserved into secure tokenized checkout.

Tokenized links, API-created applied links, and other integration-specific payment links are not redirected to Invoice Lookup Recovery. The recovery page can still be shared directly with any customer.

Guest checkout and security

A successful lookup creates a short-lived guest checkout link:

• Saved payment methods are not shown.
• The customer pays with a new card or payment method.
• The checkout link expires after about one hour.

Additional protections include:

• CAPTCHA when portal CAPTCHA is enabled for your account
• Rate limiting to reduce automated guessing
• Generic error messages that do not reveal whether an invoice exists
• Server-side validation of preserved gateways

Custom instructions

You can add optional HTML instructions to the recovery page, such as where to find the original total on your invoice PDF. Allowed formatting is limited to headings, paragraphs, bold or italic text, and lists. Scripts, links, and images are removed. If you leave the instructions blank, customers see the default Benji Pays guidance.

Troubleshooting