How Can I Accept Payments Online?

There are several processes that enable businesses to accept payments online.  There is different functionality associated with each approach to accepting payments online.

It is important to understand what pay online means.  It means different things to different people.

How is an online payment portal different than email invoices, PayPal PayNow buttons, and ACH transfers?

What is missing from the above pay online  solutions:

  • The ability for customers to log in using a user id and pass-code of their  choice.
  • Functionality for  customers to view and print current and past invoices.
  • Functionality for customers to make partial payments or to pay more  than is owed, or to pay ahead.
  • Transaction displays the correct company name on customer’s credit card or bank statement.
  • Functionality for customers to pay with credit, debit, prepaid cards and routing/bank account numbers.  Customers could even print an invoice and mail it in with a paper check if they choose.
  • View their payment history including pending and scheduled payments.
  • Transactions should automatically post to QuickBooks.  This eliminates  the  process of manually posting  payments collected on the website to QuickBooks.

There are electronic invoices.  Electronic invoices are emailed to customers.  The invoices include the functionality that when customers click on the invoice and it will link to a web page and give the customer the option of paying that invoice by credit or debit card.  Your merchant services provider and/or PayPal include this function.  That is easy to set up.  These invoices can even be set up as recurring invoices.

Another method of paying online is to add a pay-your-bill web page to your site and install a PayPal payment button.  These are easy to make and install on a webpage.  It gives customers a way to pay you money.

ACH Transfers provide the functionality to debit customer’s bank accounts electronically.  This can be set up to automatically debit the accounts periodically or debit the accounts manually.  Banks and many accounting software programs such as QuickBooks include this functionality.

If your business  is looking for help building an online payment portal and connecting it to your accounting software call.  We would love to help.