Getting Started with Payments

As a Government you provide many services through Taxpayer dollars however there are a lot of additional services that are available to citizens that may require a payment.

Previously payments had to be either mailed in (not safe!) or delivered in person (no one has time for that!) and if you enable Online Payments you are enabling your citizens to take advantage of these services from the comfort of their own home or business.

Setting Up Payments

First you will open up your form as if to edit it and click on Add-ons --> Process Payments and you will be taken to a screen that looks like this:

Gateway - This is where you will choose which payment provider you are using. To see a list of supported Gateways click here.

Description - By including a description, you will be able to know which payments are associated with which forms when you look in your payment processor's dashboard. This will also appear in the checkout area when the end user is paying.

For example, it might be helpful to write something like "Building Permit Application" so that you can differentiate these payments from others at a glance.

Amount Source - Here you will have the option to set the source of your fees from either a field value (this lets you use calculations, drop down menus, or radio buttons to choose the fees) or set a static fee (for instance a $25.00 fee each time).

• Form Field - You will start typing the name of your field and then choose it from the drop down menu of matching fields to choose your amount source.

Payment Optional - You can choose to make your payments required or optional depending on what the form requires. This also allows you to accept other methods like check by mail or paying in person.

Pre authorize only - This allows you to hold the funds until you are ready.

This may be helpful if you'd like to approve a form submitter's application before you capture their funds.

To capture authorized funds, you will go to a submission in the form's Submission Manager, navigate to the payment section in the Submission Details, and click the "Process payment" button.

Is Active - The last step is ensuring that the ability to collect payments is Active on the form. You can toggle this switch on and off for whenever you're ready to collect payments on that form.

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We have a variety of articles in our Knowledge Base on Payments that we recommend and include specific articles for the various gateways to help guide you through each processor's unique set up.

Accessing Your Submissions

You will now see a column in your Submissions Manager that reflects the payment value and it's status and by clicking on the submission you'll be able to Process the Payment if it was pre-authorized (please see section on that above).

Great work! Now let's talk about Convenience Fees in the next class.