Payments with Stripe

Your Own Stripe Account

Invoices charges your customers and takes their payments with your own Stripe account. The money goes straight to your Stripe balance; nothing passes through anyone else.

1. In Stripe, open Developers, API keys, and copy your secret key (or a restricted key) and your publishable key.
2. On Invoices' Settings page, under Payments With Stripe, copy the Webhook address (action invoices.stripe.status). In Stripe, open Developers, Webhooks, add an endpoint with that address, and choose these events: payment_intent.succeeded, payment_intent.processing, payment_intent.payment_failed, and setup_intent.succeeded. Copy the endpoint's signing secret.
3. In Setup, API Connections, choose Connect Stripe and enter the three keys (API Connections). The secret key and the signing secret are stored encrypted and never shown again.

Until Stripe is connected, Run Billing says so, and invoices are not charged.

Automatic Payments

When an invoice is finalized, it is charged with the customer's saved bank account, unless Charge automatically is off on the customer's Billing Account.

• The bank account is charged first. If the bank refuses at once and the customer saved a backup card, the card is charged instead.
• Open late charges on the invoice are charged with it, as one payment.
• Every charge is made once: asking again, or a retry after Stripe did not answer, is always the same payment.
• A bank payment takes a few business days to clear. The invoice shows Payment clearing, and gets no reminders or late fees meanwhile.
• If a bank payment comes back, the backup card is charged at once. Without a backup card, the invoice is open again, the late fee clock starts from that day with the usual grace, and the billing contacts are told by email.
• Customers who saved a bank account before (for Cascadia, in the old client portal) keep it: their Stripe customer and saved payment methods come over with their Billing Accounts, so nobody enters anything again.

The Customer's Invoice Page

Every invoice email links to the invoice's own private page. No sign-in is needed, and the link expires after 180 days (each email has a fresh one).

• The customer sees the invoice: who it is from, the dates, every line, the total, the balance, and any open late charges.
• Download PDF makes the invoice as a PDF, with a Preparing spinner until it is ready.
• Pay by Bank Account or Pay by Card opens Stripe's secure payment form on the page.
• Save a Bank Account for Automatic Payments keeps a bank account for future invoices; a customer with one can add or change a backup card. Saving one never turns billing on by itself (Billing Active).
• A draft never has a page, and a link for another company or invoice never works.

What Stripe Tells Invoices

Stripe sends each payment's news to the webhook address, and Invoices checks every message with your signing secret before it changes anything. Each message counts once.

• Processing: the payment is recorded as Pending, and the invoice shows Payment clearing.
• Succeeded: the payment is recorded, the balance goes down, and the billing contacts get a receipt. A payment for an invoice and its late charges is split over them, the invoice first.
• Failed: see above for a bank payment that comes back. A card payment the customer tried on the page that did not go through leaves nothing behind.
• A payment method saved: a bank account becomes the one charged automatically and a card the backup, each replacing the one before.