Money, plainly
Refunds & Cancellation
No minimum term, no exit fee, and you take everything with you. This page is the short version of how leaving and refunds work; the Terms of Service are the governing document.
How billing works, in one paragraph
You are billed monthly in arrears — at the end of each billing period, for the evidence Sterling took on during it. Your first 14 days are a free, watch-only fortnight. There is no upfront fee and no minimum term, and at the end of every period you are charged whichever published price point works out cheapest for your actual usage.
Our 14-day promise
If you cancel within 14 days of your first charge and have not made substantial use of the service, we will refund that charge. This is our commercial guarantee, not a statutory right, and it does not limit any right the law gives you.
Cancelling
- Cancel at any time by telling Sterling or from your account pages. We confirm it with you before acting on it, so a stray message cannot end your service.
- Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. The final period closes and is charged normally for what Sterling did in it.
- We do not pro-rate part periods, and we do not refund a period already invoiced.
- You can change your mind at any time before the cancellation takes effect.
Corrections and disputed invoices
While a billing period is open, a correction simply moves your running total. Once a period has closed, that invoice is final and we do not rewrite it: the correction is applied as a credit on your next invoice, referencing the original.
That is not symmetrical, and you should know it. An item is charged in the period it was taken on; a correction lands on the following invoice rather than as a refund of the one already issued.
If you think an invoice is wrong, tell us within 30 days of its date. Pay any part you do not dispute in the meantime; we will not charge interest on, or suspend the service for, a sum genuinely in dispute.
If a payment fails
We retry, and tell you each time before anything about your service changes. If payment still does not succeed, we pause the service — Sterling stops taking in new evidence — but we do not delete anything. Everything already processed stays readable and exportable, and everything resumes and catches up once payment goes through.
When you leave, you take everything
Your account pages can export everything we hold for you at any time: original documents as files, and your ledger, invoices, bank transactions and billing history as CSV files that open in a spreadsheet. We will not delete your data until you have successfully exported it or told us to go ahead without an export.