Take card payments

Until you connect Stripe, nothing in the app can take a card. Proposals can be signed and invoices can be sent, but a customer who wants to pay a deposit online cannot.

Turning it on

Settings → Integrations → Payments, then Connect payouts. That opens Stripe’s own onboarding, where you give them your business details and the bank account you want the money in. Come back when it is done.

The card tells you where you stand:

What it says	What it means
Not connected — customers can’t pay by card yet	Nothing has been set up
Stripe still needs a few details before payouts turn on	Onboarding started but unfinished — press Finish setup
Card payments settle directly into your bank account	Working
Stripe paused this account	Stripe needs something from you — open the Stripe dashboard to see what

That third state is the one to aim for, and the wording is literal.

Note

Money goes straight to you. Charges are created on your own Stripe account, so a customer’s payment settles into your bank without passing through us, and we take no percentage of it. Stripe’s own processing fees still apply, at whatever rate your Stripe account is on.

That middle state is worth watching for. Stripe often lets you start taking payments before onboarding is fully complete, and then holds the payouts — so money can be collected and not yet paid out. Finish setup is what clears it, and the Stripe dashboard tells you exactly which detail is missing.

What customers can pay

Once connected:

• A deposit on a proposal. The Deposit % on the proposal decides the amount, and the customer pays it when they sign.
• An invoice. Sent with a pay link.
• In person, with a card you have on file.

Saving a card on file

On a customer’s record you can save a card for later — useful for maintenance plans and for the balance on a job you are about to finish.

The card details never touch us: Stripe collects them and hands back a token, and what we store is the brand and the last four digits so you can tell which card is which.

Caution

Saving a card is not permission to charge it whenever you like. Get the customer’s agreement for each charge unless you have a written arrangement saying otherwise — a maintenance plan they signed up for, say. A surprise charge is a chargeback, and chargebacks cost more than the invoice.

Deposits, balances and what “Collected” means

This trips people up more than anything else in the app, so it is worth being precise.

A deposit is not settlement. A job with a $1,250 deposit against a $5,000 price stays PARTLY PAID — the job is open, the invoice is open, and the balance is $3,750. That is deliberate: a deposit-paid job still needs finishing and still needs collecting.

On the Payments page, Collected counts payments actually received, so a deposit appears the day it lands rather than when the job closes. It is the figure to reconcile against your bank.

Caution

A partially refunded payment currently drops out of Collected entirely rather than counting the amount you kept. If you take partial refunds, treat Collected as a floor rather than an exact figure.

For everything else on that page — Open A/R, Past due, Unbilled, Pipeline, and why a row reads the way it does — see Reading the numbers on Payments.

When the money arrives

Payouts are Stripe’s, not ours. The schedule is set on your Stripe account — typically a rolling couple of days after the charge, longer for a brand new account — and you can see and change it in the Stripe dashboard. A payment showing as collected here has been charged; whether it has landed in your bank is a Stripe question.

If a payment does not show up

Card payments are recorded when Stripe tells us they succeeded, which is normally instant and occasionally delayed. If a customer says they paid and you cannot see it:

1. Check the Stripe dashboard — if it is there, the charge worked
2. Give it a few minutes; the record catches up on its own
3. If it is in Stripe and still missing here after that, send it to support with the customer’s name and the amount

Do not take a second payment. A charge that exists in Stripe is real money and will reconcile.

Before you send a customer a pay link

• The card reads Card payments settle directly into your bank account
• Your bank details in Stripe are the account you actually want the money in
• Send yourself a small invoice and pay it, then refund it — the cheapest way to know the whole path works before a customer is on the other end