Payments in practice

This article assumes you have read How payments work. Each section is one question.

A customer paid twice

The portal does its best to stop this. If a customer opens an invoice that already has a payment processing or waiting on their bank, they see “Payment already in progress” with the number of payments still clearing, and have to click Pay anyway to go on. Bank debits are the usual cause, because they take days to settle.

If a second payment does go through, the customer is charged but nothing changes in your accounting system. The invoice is already paid, so the second payment cannot be applied to it and the row on the Payments page shows Paid & Sync Failed. Refund it in your Stripe dashboard (View in Stripe on the row takes you there). There is nothing to reverse in Xero or QuickBooks, and Paidnice does not write refunds back, so the row stays as it is.

A Stripe payment shows Started, Abandoned or Expired

These are checkouts that never finished. Started means the customer opened the Stripe checkout in the last 10 minutes. After 10 minutes with no payment it becomes Abandoned. Expired means Stripe closed the checkout session before the customer paid.

None of these mean money moved, and nothing is written to your accounting system. The Payments page hides Abandoned and Expired rows unless you filter for them. If the same customer then pays, that is a new row.

A Stripe payment will not sync

The customer paid, but the invoice is still unpaid in Xero or QuickBooks and the row shows Paid & Sync Failed. Hover the status for the reason. The common ones:

• “Organisation does not have a stripe payments account for this currency”: the customer paid in a currency you have no Bank Account For Stripe Revenue set for. Add one under Payment Providers.
• “Organisation does not have a stripe fees account” or “… surcharges account”: the fees or fee revenue account is missing.
• “Account … is not in the same currency as the payment”: the bank account for that currency is actually in another currency.
• A locked period or an invoice that is already paid: your accounting system’s own error is shown.

Fix the cause, then click Retry Sync in the row’s menu. Paidnice also retries on its own, every 30 minutes up to 5 times. If it gives up, every connected user gets an email titled “A payment from {customer} needs to be recorded manually”. The customer has been charged and the money is in Stripe, so record the payment by hand against the invoice and the fee against your fees account.

Bank debit payments are a different case. They sit at Processing or Action Required until the bank confirms them, which can take several days, and only sync once they are Paid.

Pay by card is missing from the portal

In order of likelihood:

1. Stripe setup is incomplete. The buttons need the bank account for the invoice’s currency, the Stripe Fees Expense Account and, with the processing fee on, the Fee Revenue Account. Check all three under Payment Providers.
2. The invoice is not approved and unpaid, or it is a draft, or it is a fee invoice. Only approved invoices with an amount due can be paid.
3. More than one provider is on. Stripe overrides the others, and a Pinch, RPS or custom link only shows when Stripe is not fully set up.
4. On QuickBooks, Stripe needs early access. Contact support.

Pay by ACH or Pay by Direct Debit is missing when the method is not turned on in your Stripe account for that currency. Turn it on in Stripe, under Payment methods.

The custom payment link will not save

• Paste the link before switching Enable Custom Payment Link on. Switching on first gives “Please enter a custom payment link template before enabling.”
• Save Changes only appears after you have edited the link. Click it, then check the page again after a refresh.
• The link has to be under 1000 characters.
• You do not need to type https://. Paidnice adds it.
• Use the merge tag picker rather than typing the tags. The values go in as {{{DueAmount}}}, {{{InvoiceNumber}}}, {{{InvoiceCurrency}}} and {{{ShortCode}}} or {{{QBOCompanyID}}}, and a typo in one of them means the provider gets a blank value.

Test with a real invoice from the portal before telling customers. If the amount arrives blank, the Due Amount tag is missing. If the reference is missing, your provider may not accept an invoice number in the URL.

Stripe payout breakdowns

Stripe pays you in batches, and the batch rarely matches one invoice. Paidnice does not record payouts. It records each payment at its full amount against the invoice, plus a separate spend money transaction for the Stripe fee and, if you charge one, a receive money transaction for the processing fee. All three carry the Stripe charge id. Reconcile the payout in your bank feed against those transactions. For a list of which charges and fees are in a given payout, open the payout in your Stripe dashboard. The Payments page in Paidnice shows the Stripe fee and surcharge revenue per payment if you want to cross-check.

GoCardless

There is no GoCardless integration. Customers who pay you by GoCardless direct debit through Xero carry on doing so, and Xero records those payments. The Paidnice portal shows your Stripe or payment link buttons only. If a customer on a mandate should not be chased, freeze the contact or exclude them with a tag.

Partial payments

Turn on Allow partial payments? under Payment Providers and set the Minimum Payment Amount as a percentage of the amount due. The customer then sees Pay a different amount on the invoice page. Anything below the minimum is refused with “Minimum payment amount is {amount}”, and anything above the amount due with “Payment amount cannot be greater than the due amount”.

Part payments only apply to a single invoice. Paying several invoices at once from the customer portal always charges the full amount due. A part-paid invoice keeps being chased for the balance, and a payment plan is the better tool if the customer wants a fixed schedule.

Australian card surcharges

From 1 October 2026 the Reserve Bank of Australia’s rules stop businesses surcharging debit, prepaid and credit card payments on the eftpos, Mastercard and Visa networks. Paidnice does not apply a country rule for you. If you are an Australian organisation with Charge a processing fee? on, turn it off, or set Fee Percentage (Card) and Fee Flat Rate Amount (Card) to 0. The card rate is also used when you charge a saved card from Paidnice, so changing it covers both. The direct debit rate is separate and you may want to leave it.

Payments already taken with a surcharge are not affected. The surcharge income stays in your Fee Revenue Account.

Checking where a payment went

• Payments page: every Stripe payment made through Paidnice, its status, the invoice currency and the currency Stripe settled in, the surcharge and the Stripe fee. Search by contact, invoice number or Stripe id. View Receipt opens the Stripe receipt.
• Invoice timeline: the payment appears once it has synced, along with the thank you email if you have one set up.
• Portal Views tab on the invoice: whether the customer opened the invoice page at all.