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Accepting Online Payments

In this article you’ll learn how to accept payments online to enjoy a faster, smoother payment experience for both you and your clients.

You’ll learn about your different processor options, as well as your clients’ payment options.

Overview of online payments

Once you enable and set up online payments, you can accept online payments in various ways, like directly upon booking, electronic invoices from your client portal or website, and even send mobile payment requests.

Overview of payment processors

You can connect your account to several popular online payment processors and/or gateways. Select the one that best meets your business needs, preferences, and business location.
You have two main types of payment processing options:

  1. Receive payments directly to your bank account with Stripe, Square, PayPal or Payments by inTandem
  • These payment processors provide you with direct deposits into your bank account.
  • You can also accept and charge credit cards when using one of these payment processors.
  1. Receive payments to your PayPal Wallet account
  • If you choose  PayPal Wallet as your payment method, funds will be deposited into your PayPal account.
Note: If PayPal Wallet is your only payment processor, you will not be able to charge credit cards in person (i.e, manually key in a payment).  For in-person charges, connect to either Stripe or Square, as well.
Note: You can choose to connect to one of these payment processors or connect to PayPal in combination with one of the two credit card processors: Stripe or Square.
Tip: To offer your clients more payment options, connect to both a credit card processor and PayPal Wallet. This will allow your clients to choose their payment methods at checkout.
Note: If PayPal is your only payment gateway, you cannot charge credit cards in person (i.e, manually key in a payment).  For in-person charges, connect to either Stripe or Square, as well.

Processing fees and times

1. Processing fees:

Your account will not be charged with any additional transaction fees besides the fees determined by your payment processor and/or gateway. See below:

Get all the information you need regarding the different processing fees directly from your select providers’ website: Square processing fees, Stripe processing fees, PayPal processing fees.

2. Processing times:

PayPal: Payments are normally transferred to your PayPal account immediately. To transfer funds to your bank account, you will need to initiate a transfer from your PayPal account.

Square/Stripe: On newly created Square and Stripe accounts, payments normally take 5 - 7 business days to deposit directly into your bank account. This duration will likely shorten as your account becomes more established.

Currency for online payments

If you haven’t done so yet, make sure your currencyis set up right for your payment and business location needs. To learn more about currency, go to the Setting Up Payments article.

Important: When using Square as your payment processor for online payments, make sure your multiple currency option is disabled. To learn more, go to the Setting Up Payments article.

Connecting your payment processor

Once you’ve decided on the payment processing options right for you, here’s how you connect your account to one or several processors:

Step 1: Go to the Settings > Payments in your main menu.

Step 2: Scroll down to Choose your preferred payment methods, click Connect under your desired payment processor. 

Step 3: If you connect to more than one credit card processor, you need to make one of them active by clicking on the appropriate radio button.

The image below displays an account that is connected to Square, Stripe & PayPal. Stripe is selected as the active processor for credit card payments:

Step 4: Click Save on top to save your settings.

Note: In the example you see above, your client will have the option of paying either with Square or PayPal at checkout.  
Note: For information on how your currency affects online payments, go to the Currency for online payments section above.

Enable online payments

Once you are connected to the payment processors that are right for you, follow these steps to enable online payments:

Step 1: Go to Settings > Payments. 

Step 2: Go to the Payment Processing tab, and make sure your Currency options are set right for you.

Step 3: Choose from the following online payment activities:

  • Clients can pay you online
  • Clients can access their payment activity online
  • Allow both options for a complete online payment experience, as displayed here:

Important: Both options are checked by default. The second checkbox must remain checked for online payments to be turned on.

Step 4: Click Save to save your changes.

Note: To view their personal payment history, clients need to log into their personal account through the Client Portal. Otherwise, they can only pay custom amounts. For more, go to the Getting Paid Online article. 
Tip: For an improved client checkout experience, encourage your clients to log in to their client portal when taking action with your business by sending them a direct login link. To learn more, go the Client Portal article.

If you would like to enable partial payments for invoices:

Step 1: Go to Settings > Payments.

Step 2: Switch to the Invoices & Estimates tab. Under the Partial Payments sections, check the Enable partial payments for invoices checkbox.

Step 3: If needed, you can even specify a minimum partial payment percentage. Clients will need to pay at least 25% of the invoice total each time in the example below:

Note: only invoices may be paid with partial payments.

Learn more: To learn all about the online payment experience from both the business and client-side, go to the Getting Paid Online article.

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