Taking Payment From a Customer
Every payment on the Payment Tracker starts from one button, Take payment. From there you either write down money you already have — cash, a check, a bank transfer, or a card you ran somewhere else — or collect it: send the customer a payment link they open on their own phone or computer, or charge their card on a card reader at the desk. The same steps open from Take payment on an invoice and on a customer’s billing profile, and any of them can pay one or several of that customer’s invoices at once. Money you collect deposits into your own bank account. This is money coming in from your customer — it has nothing to do with the credit balance you spend on the app, which is How Billing and Credits Work.
What it costs
Section titled “What it costs”Card and bank payments carry a processing fee. On every payment you decide who absorbs it — you or the customer — on the Fees step, and the review screen shows both what the customer pays and what you net before you create anything. For a link to invoices, that answer is saved on the link as Customer pays the card fee; how the fee then shows on the invoices is in Invoicing a Customer.
Rates differ by payment method and change over time, so this article does not print them. The Fees step inside a payment shows the rate that applies to the methods you have selected, and the review screen turns it into dollars before you send anything.
Step by step
Section titled “Step by step”1. Set up your payment account (once)
Section titled “1. Set up your payment account (once)”Open Payments from the sidebar and click Set up payments. Our payment processor asks for your business details and where to deposit — it takes a few minutes and there is nothing to post or sign.
If your dealership is not verified yet, this refuses and tells you where to fix it, because the processor will not open an account without it. It also needs the dealership’s FEIN filled in under Settings → Dealer Management → Tax and License Numbers — the processor is given that number as your business’s tax ID — and a phone number and email under Settings → Dealer Management → Contact Information. The FEIN only has to be there; nothing about it needs approving separately.
2. Take payment
Section titled “2. Take payment”Go to Payments → Payment Tracker and click Take payment — or click Take payment at the top of an invoice or of a customer’s billing profile, or tick invoices on the billing profile and click Take payment in the bar under them. The first screen asks What happened?, and the rest of the steps follow from your answer:
- Already paid — log it — the money is already in your hands: cash, a check, a bank transfer, a money order, or a card you ran somewhere else. Nothing is charged; you are writing it down.
- Send a payment link — the customer pays online, by card or bank, from a link you send.
- Charge on a card reader — the customer taps or inserts their card on your reader.
A card does not have to mean a link. If the customer paid by card on another machine, that is Already paid, and you pick Card (taken elsewhere) as how they paid.
Until card payments are set up, the link and card reader choices are shown but cannot be picked, and a line under them says so — with Set up card payments if your user is allowed to do it.
Take payment
Step 1 of 7 — What happened?
What happened?
Then, on every path, who paid or is paying — pick them from your customers, or add them right there, and a new customer is saved and picked for you. Started from an invoice or a billing profile, this step is skipped: the customer is already known. To collect by link or card reader, the customer’s record needs a name; if it only has an email, the screen says so and links to their page to fix it.
Then Which invoices — the customer’s open invoices. Ticking one fills in everything it still owes, and you can change any amount (on a link your customer chooses instead, on their own page). Started from an invoice, that invoice is already ticked at its full balance; from a billing profile, the ones you ticked there are. Any other invoice of theirs is a tick away. Leaving them all unticked means the money is not for an invoice yet — it waits in their payments until a later invoice takes it. That is not offered when you start from an invoice: a payment taken there pays at least one invoice, so it always shows on the invoice. If nothing is left to pay, the screen says so and points to the customer’s billing profile. This step is only asked if you may edit invoices — or, for a link, send them.
Which business. If you bill under more than one name — businesses added in Invoices → Settings — a link or a card-reader charge asks which business it is from, starting on the one new invoices start from. Your customer sees that name on the payment page, in the email or text that brings the link, on the card charge and on their receipt, and replies to the email go to that business’s address when it has one. It is not asked when invoices are ticked, because they already say whose they are — and invoices from two businesses cannot share one link or one card charge. Money you log by hand is never asked: nothing is sent in anyone’s name. See Invoicing for More Than One Business.
3a. Already paid — log it
Section titled “3a. Already paid — log it”Amount. On a screen of its own. With invoices ticked, it starts at what they take. It can be more — the extra stays on the payment, unassigned, ready to put toward something later — but never less. With nothing ticked, the box starts empty, ready to type into.
How they paid. Cash, check, Card (taken elsewhere), bank transfer, money order or other, the date you received it, and — under Add a reference — a check or reference number and what it was for.
A deal jacket. Only asked when no invoice is ticked — a ticked invoice already says which deal the money is on — and only if you may edit deals. The customer’s deal jackets are listed here — only theirs, so you cannot attach the money to somebody else’s sale by mistake — with what each one still owes, the ones still owing first. If there are five or fewer you pick one straight from the screen; more than that and you get a searchable list instead. Nothing yet is always one of the choices, and picking it takes a deal back off.
Review. What you are about to record, in one list — including a note when the money is going to no deal jacket and no invoice. Nothing is written down until you press Record a payment.
Invoices on different deal jackets. A payment pays down one deal jacket. So when the invoices you tick bill different deal jackets — or some bill one and some do not — the money is saved as one payment per deal jacket, each with the same method, date and reference, and each deal is paid down. The amount is then exactly what the invoices take, and the screen says so.
3b. Send a payment link
Section titled “3b. Send a payment link”With invoices ticked, there is no amount to type: your customer chooses what to pay on their own invoice page. After Methods (which ways they can pay) and Fees (whether the card fee is added to what they pay), the review lists the invoices and who covers the card fee. Continue to send then opens the window for sharing that page — started from an invoice with only that invoice ticked, it is the invoice’s own Send window; otherwise it is one page listing every invoice you ticked. Copy the link or email it from there. What your customer sees is in Invoicing a Customer.
With nothing ticked, this creates a payment that is not attached to any deal — useful for a service job, a parts sale or a deposit taken before there is a deal jacket. After the amount (what you want to end up with, and what the payment is for):
| Step | What it settles |
|---|---|
| Methods | Which payment methods to offer the customer. |
| Fees | Whether the processing fee is added to what the customer pays, or absorbed by you. |
| Review | What the customer pays, what you net, who it is for, and the methods offered. |
Press Create payment link. The Share Payment Link window then offers a QR code the customer can scan, a copy button, an open-in-a-new-tab button, and — where they are available for your dealership — send by email or by WhatsApp. The email or phone on the customer’s record is where it is sent.
3c. Charge on a card reader
Section titled “3c. Charge on a card reader”First register the reader, once. Go to Payments → Card Readers and click Register Reader. On the reader itself, go to Settings → Generate registration code; it produces three words joined by hyphens. Type that into Registration Code, give the reader a Label if you have more than one, and save.
After that, choose Charge on a card reader on the first screen of Take payment. It checks for your reader straight away; if there is none, it says how to get one and offers Send a payment link instead. Then the customer, the invoices, the amount and the Fees, and on the review press Charge on reader, then Send to Card Reader. The amount appears on the reader, the customer taps or inserts, and the payment window here confirms it.
One card charge can pay invoices for one vehicle only. If the invoices you tick bill different deal jackets, the screen asks you to untick the others and charge them separately.
You can rename, deactivate or remove a reader from the menu on its card. Removing it means re-registering with a fresh code before it can be used again.
Card Readers
Register and manage your in-person card readers.
Following what happened
Section titled “Following what happened”Payments → Payment Tracker is the list of every payment your dealership has taken — cash, checks, cards and bank transfers — and where each one is applied. Three figures sit above it:
- Received · last 30 days — the money that arrived in the last 30 days, with a tag under it for each way it was paid — Card, Cash, Check, Bank transfer and so on — and how much came in that way.
- Still clearing — card and bank payments on their way to you that have not arrived yet. A payment your customer started and never finished is not counted.
- Not yet assigned — money you have received that is on no deal jacket and has not all been put toward invoices. The figure is the part still left to assign.
Click a figure, or one of the tags under Received · last 30 days, and the list shows exactly what it counts; click it again to see everything.
Received · last 30 days
14 payments
Still clearing
2 payments
Not yet assigned
3 payments
You can search the list and filter it by status, by how it was paid, by amount and by Where it went — Not yet assigned, On an invoice or On a deal jacket. Amount takes a smallest and a largest, and either one on its own means “at least this much” or “up to this much”. A payment you recorded yourself shows as Received; a card payment keeps its own status (pending, succeeded, refunded, failed or canceled). A pending one shows both what it is for and how much of it has actually arrived — nothing counts until it does — and says why it is waiting: the customer has not finished paying, a bank payment is still clearing, or their bank wants them to confirm it. The Status filter can also pick out just the pending payments that are Still clearing, and Refunded finds the payments where money actually went back, in full or in part.
- Clicking a row opens the payment: how and when it was paid, who paid, the deal jacket it is on, the invoices it has been put toward, and how much of it is not yet assigned. From there you can put it toward invoices — or, once it is on some, change which invoices it pays — attach it to a deal jacket, move it to another or take it off one, or, for a payment you recorded yourself, change it or delete it. How a payment is spread across invoices is in Invoicing a Customer.
- If a payment does not say who it came from, Name the customer on that line sets it, and the pencil beside a name changes it. This is what lets an older payment — or one taken through a payment link — be put toward an invoice. A payment that is already paying someone else’s invoice has to come off that invoice first.
- Detach customer, in that same window, takes the customer off the payment. If the payment is on a deal jacket it comes off the deal too — a deal’s buyer is who paid it — and the question before it happens says so, including how much that deal’s balance goes back up. The payment itself is kept.
- For a card payment, Card payment details opens the full card detail, including the fee taken and the refund control.
- The menu on the right of a row re-opens the share window, or cancels a card payment that has not been paid yet.
- A payment on a deal jacket shows a Deal link back to it; one applied to invoices shows each invoice number.
- If you have permission to handle disputes, a Disputes tab appears beside Payments.
Payments → Card Payments is where card processing is set up and, once it is, where that account is managed — including anything Stripe is asking you for, and your account documents. The Card Readers and Payouts tabs appear once you have a card-payment account.
Payments → Payouts shows the money moving from those payments into your bank account, and when.
If it will not let you continue
Section titled “If it will not let you continue”| What you see | Why, and where it is fixed |
|---|---|
| Asked to verify your business before setting up payments | Your dealer license and business details are not confirmed yet — Settings → Dealer Management → Tax and License Numbers |
| Asked to add your FEIN before setting up card payments | The number is missing — type it in on Settings → Dealer Management → Tax and License Numbers |
| Take payment is missing | Your user does not have permission to create payments — an account admin changes it in Settings → Users |
| The amount is refused as less than what you put toward invoices | A payment cannot be smaller than the invoices you ticked — raise the amount, or go back and lower an invoice |
| A card charge can pay invoices for one vehicle at a time | The invoices you ticked bill different deal jackets — untick the others and charge them separately |
| Invoices from different businesses cannot share a link or a card charge | The invoices you ticked were billed by different businesses — take each business’s invoices on its own |
| Send a payment link and Charge on a card reader cannot be picked | Card payments are not set up yet — Payments → Card Payments |
| Charge on a card reader says a reader has to be set up | No reader has been registered yet, or the registered one is inactive — Payments → Card Readers |
| Registering a reader says there is no active payment account | Your payment account is not finished or not active — go back to Payments and complete setup |
| Email or WhatsApp will not send a link that is already paid | Use Copy or the QR code to share the receipt instead |
After you finish
Section titled “After you finish”If the payment was one installment of a note you are carrying, the account it belongs to lives in Collections and Payment Schedules. If it belonged to a sale, take it from the deal jacket instead so the balance stays right — Creating a Payment Link.