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.
What's new?
If you've already been collecting Payments with us you're probably asking yourself what has changed and what the benefits are of the new payments modal.
The first benefit is that we are able to offer more Payment Processors so that you have more choices! With our new Payments feature it will also be easier to add more Payment Processors in the future.
Second benefit is flexibility around functionality and here is a list of just some of the benefits you'll find:
- Ability to add Custom Convenience Fees and flexibility around how those fees are calculated like having a percentage, flat fee, or a percentage and a flat fee for instance.
-Ability for Applicant to Pre-Authorize a certain amount for instance for Public Record Requests. This would allow them to say that they want to be charged up to $100 but not over, or just a portion of the $100 depending on how much it costs to process the request.
-The set up for WebForms and SeamlessDocs is the same. Previously the options for payments were different between the two types of forms but now you'll have the same options (flat fee or field value) on both forms. This means you can now use calculations and make payments optional on WebForms!
There are many other benefits to the new Payments that you will see as you're setting them up but, if you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out to us.
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.
NOTE: We do not allow authentication and testing with a demo/test account. These must be credentials from a live account.
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. NOTE: You can only choose Text Fields as your amount source. So if you would like to use Radio Buttons/Checkboxes or Drop Down Menu's in your calculations you'll want to add a text field that you can have the values calculated in along with those fields.
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.
Convenience Fee - You can also set up a custom convenience fee that will be charged on top of any service fees that are charged by the payment processor. A great example is if you wanted to charge a fee to process the application it can help bring revenue to the team that handles these requests!
Custom Fee Name - You can add a title to the fee so that when they are paying they will know why they are paying the fee
Fee Type - You have several different options for the types of fees that you can have added onto the principal amount:
Percentage - This will charge a percentage of the principal amount
Set Fee - This will be a static fee each time, for instance $5.00 per transaction
Percentage + Set Fee - This will be a combination of the two previous methods
Percentage and Minimum Fee - This allows you also to set a minimum fee no matter how large or small the transaction is.
Advanced - We are always looking to learn more about your processes and this method will give you a form you can submit to request a fee we don't offer yet.
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.
Send Receipt - You can have a receipt email sent to a user who is paying based on an Email Validated field on a form:
From there the receipt will look as such:
Pre authorize only - This allows you to hold the funds until you are ready (NOTE: This will expire at a certain time depending on your gateway)
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.
NOTE: We recommend you only process payments and refunds in GovOS Studio, not within the Payment Gateway itself, to ensure there are no issues.
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.
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).
