How payments work

Paidnice does not hold money. It puts a pay button in front of the customer, on the invoice page in the portal, on the customer portal and in emails, and sends them to a payment provider you already have. With Stripe it goes further and records the payment, the Stripe fee and any processing fee in your accounting system for you.

Payment providers live under Settings, General, Payment Providers. Pick one. If more than one is on, the page warns you that there is no control over which link is used, and Stripe takes priority over the others in the portal.

For what to do when a payment goes wrong, see Payments in practice.

Stripe

Stripe is available to Xero organisations. For QuickBooks it is in beta, and the page says “Stripe is currently in beta for QuickBooks Online. Please contact us to request early access.”

Click the Stripe connect button and sign in to your Stripe account. Then fill in the settings. The pay buttons do not appear in the portal until the bank account, the fees account and, if you charge a processing fee, the fee revenue account are all set.

• Bank Account For Stripe Revenue: the account the invoice payment is recorded against. There is one selector per currency you invoice in, and only accounts in that currency are offered. Use the account your Stripe bank feed goes to.
• Stripe Fees Expense Account: where the Stripe fee on each payment is recorded.
• Charge a processing fee?: off by default. The helper text reminds you that in some jurisdictions passing fees on is prohibited. See the note on Australia in Payments in practice.
• Fee Percentage (Card) and Fee Flat Rate Amount (Card): what you add to card payments. The fee is a percentage of the amount being paid plus the flat amount.
• Fee Revenue Account and, on QuickBooks, Fee Revenue Tax Rate: where the processing fee income goes.
• Fee Percentage (Direct Debit) and Fee Flat Rate (Direct Debit): a separate rate for ACH, BACS and other bank debit methods. Set both to 0 to charge nothing extra on bank payments.
• Allow partial payments?: lets a customer pay less than the amount due on a single invoice. Turning it on sets the Minimum Payment Amount to 50%, which you can change to anything from 0.1% to 100%.

On QuickBooks there is also a Tax Rate for the Stripe fee itself.

Which payment methods the customer sees depends on your Stripe account, not Paidnice. Cards are always offered. A bank debit option appears when your Stripe account has the method for the invoice currency turned on: ACH for USD, BECS for AUD, BACS for GBP, SEPA for EUR, and the local direct debit schemes for NZD and CAD.

Pinch, RPS and custom payment links

These add a Pay now button and an email merge tag that opens your provider’s hosted checkout with the invoice details filled in. The customer pays there, and the payment reaches your accounting system however that provider normally records it. Paidnice does not record it.

• Enable Pinch Payments: one switch. You must already be a Pinch customer.
• Enable RPS Payments: a switch plus RPS Payment URL and RPS Token, which you get from RPS. The page shows the link it will generate.
• Custom Payment Link: for any provider with a hosted checkout that accepts values in the URL, such as PayFast or a PayPal.me style link. Switch on Enable Custom Payment Link, click + Add a custom payment link, paste the provider’s link format and use the merge tag picker to drop in Due Amount, Invoice Number, Invoice Currency and your Short Code (Xero) or QBO Company ID (QuickBooks) where the provider expects them. Click Save Changes.

Providers that only work through an API call, with no hosted page, cannot be used this way.

What the customer sees

On the invoice page in the portal, next to the amount due:

• Pay by card and, when available, Pay by ACH or Pay by Direct Debit for Stripe.
• Pay a different amount if partial payments are on. It opens a form with quick picks at 10, 25, 50 and 75 percent, and a Payment Amount field that enforces your minimum.
• Pay now for Pinch, RPS or a custom link.

On the customer portal, customers can tick several invoices in one currency and pay them together. The processing fee, if any, is shown as a separate line at checkout, called Card Processing Fee or Payment Processing Fee.

Statements and reminder emails get a Pay Now button or link too. See How the customer portal works.

How a Stripe payment is recorded

When Stripe confirms the payment, Paidnice writes up to three things to Xero or QuickBooks:

1. A payment against each invoice, into the bank account for the currency Stripe settled in, dated the day the payment was made and referenced with the Stripe charge id.
2. If you charge a processing fee, a receive money transaction into the Fee Revenue Account, described as “Surcharge for {charge id}”.
3. A spend money transaction for the Stripe fee, out of the Stripe Fees Expense Account, described as “Transaction fees for {charge id}”.

The two bank transactions use a contact called “Stripe [Paidnice]”, so they are easy to find. In Xero they are tax inclusive and carry the note “Received through Stripe [Paidnice]”.

Bank debit payments take a few days to settle. Until they do, the payment shows as Processing and nothing is written to your accounting system.

Every Stripe payment made through Paidnice appears on the Payments page in the sidebar, which only shows once Stripe is connected. Expand a row to see which invoices it covered. Payments made in Stripe directly, or through another provider, are not listed.

Saved cards and charging a card yourself

Where it is turned on for your account, customers can save a card or bank account in the portal under Payment methods. Saving a method needs a verified email address. A saved method lets them pay future invoices without typing details again.

It also lets you charge the card from Paidnice. On an approved unpaid invoice with a saved card, click Pay with saved card in the invoice header, pick the card, check the Total to charge including any card processing fee, and click Charge. Paidnice records the payment as usual and adds a note to the invoice saying who charged which card, so there is a record that the customer was not present.

Things to know

• The payment is recorded in the invoice currency. If Stripe settled in a different currency, the bank account for the settlement currency is used and the exchange rate comes from Stripe.
• Refunds made in Stripe are not written back. Reverse the payment in Xero or QuickBooks yourself.
• Disconnecting Stripe stops new payments but keeps the history on the Payments page. If other organisations share the Stripe account, the page warns you before you disconnect.