Payment in Paylent is a record of money that arrived. Cards create that record for you; anything else you record yourself. Either way an invoice is settled when the payments against it add up to its total.
Connecting Stripe
Connect Stripe once, from Settings → Payments, and card payment turns on for every invoice you send afterwards. Paylent asks which country your business is in and onboards you against that — a British business billing in pounds and an Irish one billing in euros are not the same form.
Card payments are direct charges on your own Stripe account. That has consequences worth being clear about:
- You are the merchant of record. Your name is what appears on your customer’s statement.
- The money never passes through Paylent. It lands in your Stripe balance and pays out on your own Stripe schedule.
- Stripe’s fees are Stripe’s, taken before the money reaches you. Paylent adds nothing on top of them.
- Refunds, disputes and chargebacks are handled in Stripe, because that is where the charge lives.
What your customer sees
The email you send carries a private link to the invoice. Opening it shows the invoice — your business, their details, the lines, the tax and the total — and, if Stripe is connected, a button that pays it.
They do not need an account, a password or anything else. The link is the credential, which is why it is unguessable and why you can rotate it if it ends up somewhere it should not be.
Recording a payment yourself
Bank transfer, cash, cheque, a card machine at your own counter: record it against the invoice with the amount and the date. Part payments are fine — record each one as it arrives and the invoice keeps track of what is left.
There is a paid in full shortcut for the common case. It reads the amount off the invoice rather than off the box, so it stays right when a part payment has already been recorded: it settles what is actually left, not the original total.
An invoice can also be settled without money arriving, by crediting it. See Invoices.
Payments are only counted once
A card payment can be reported to us more than once: Stripe’s webhook and the customer’s browser can both describe the same charge, and a webhook can arrive twice on its own. Paylent recognises a payment it has already recorded, so the same money is never counted twice however many times it is described.
The practical version: if a customer pays by card and the invoice does not immediately show as paid, wait rather than recording it by hand. The webhook will settle it.
When it doesn’t arrive
Unpaid invoices are followed up on their own, starting before the due date. See Chasing payment.