The Stripe integration allows your customers to pay you directly from the Clear Books invoices you issue them. Successful payments automatically mark these invoices as paid and generate a Stripe transaction fee. This guide helps explain this process.
Before you can begin you need to set up the Stripe integration.
How to connect your account with Stripe
Step 1.
To begin, navigate to Sales > Invoices and create a new invoice.
Step 2.
Fill in the details of the invoice as appropriate. Most importantly, select your Stripe account in the Bank details to display field at the bottom.
Save the invoice.
Step 3.
Next, click on the Email button to email the invoice to your customer.
In the email message, a link to an HTML version of the invoice is included. The invoice will show a Stripe payment button as described in the ‘How your customer makes payment’ section of this guide.
You can also choose to attach a PDF version of the invoice by navigating to Settings > Configure system > Toggle features > Invoicing & expenses and toggling on Email with attached PDF.
The email message will also have a link to the customer statement which will include an option to pay outstanding invoices via Stripe. You can disable this option by editing the Stripe bank account on the Money > Bank accounts menu.
How your customer makes payment
Once your customer clicks on the invoice link from within this email, they are taken to an HTML copy of the invoice showing a Pay by card button.
If your customer opens the PDF it will show a Review and pay by card button. Clicking on this button will redirect them to the HTML version of the invoice.
When the client clicks on the Pay by card button they are redirected to a stripe payment page and are asked to fill out the payment form as shown below:
How the invoice is updated in Clear Books
Clear Books is instantly updated upon successful payments and automatically creates a payment which is allocated to the invoice. The Stripe fee is created as a bill within the system which is marked as paid.
If you head to the Money > Bank accounts menu and click on your Stripe bank account you should be able to view a deposit for the invoice payment and a withdrawal for the Stripe fee. You can click on the amounts to view the details.
Any payments (and the associated Stripe fee) that you collect from invoices will not appear on the Stripe statements that import automatically.
