Payments, in depth

Every charge starts as an item or an invoice, with a due date and a description. Staff create it for a person, or for a guest who has no person record. Each item belongs to a part of the app, such as Faith Formation or VBS, so reports can group sales by program.

Staff then choose how it is paid.

• Payment link. Staff submit a link request. A reviewer approves or denies it. Only an approved request has live links that families can pay. Cancel stops every link at once. A link has an expiry date, and an approved request shows as expired when all of its links have passed it.
• Invoice. A family opens a public pay link, reads the items and pays. A deposit can hold a place, and the rest can follow in any amount.
• Payment plan. An item can split into two or four equal payments. The total must divide to the cent, or checkout refuses the plan. Stripe charges each installment on its own. Staff see paid, remaining, next payment date and a status of Active, Completed, Cancelled or Past Due.
• Cash and check. Staff record these by hand. They never reach Stripe.
• Card reader. A reader takes cards at the office or at an event.

An invoice is Pending, Partially paid, On a payment plan, Paid or Cancelled. Staff see the open invoices, the outstanding balance and how many invoices are overdue.

Cancelling an invoice that holds money asks for a reason first. A card payment goes back to the card. A cash or check payment becomes a credit note, and staff hand back the money outside the app. A payment plan stops before any refund starts. The invoice becomes Cancelled only after every refund succeeds. A failed refund leaves the invoice open, and a second try refunds only what remains. The reason and each refund go in the invoice history.

The app records a refund only after Stripe confirms it. Three read-only screens then check the records against Stripe.

• Today vs Stripe compares one day. It counts card reader sales and online sales on both sides. It lists Stripe charges with no app record, app sales with no Stripe charge, and amounts that differ. The verdict never says "match" if a read was incomplete.
• Refund Reconciliation checks a window of up to 120 days. It finds Stripe refunds with no refund record, refund records Stripe cannot confirm, and items whose refunded total differs.
• Declined Cards lists open tickets from failed plan charges, next to the live Stripe state. Staff can close a ticket only when Stripe shows the invoice as paid. Closing sends the family nothing.

The sales report covers one Stripe payout at a time for card sales. It shows each sale with its sale date, deposit date, Stripe fee and net, so staff can match a bank deposit to the sales inside it. Cash and check reports use a date range of up to 366 days. All three filter by program and export to CSV. A separate sales tax report is available.

Cash sessions show each cash drawer: the starting float, expected cash, counted cash and the variance. A cashier opens and closes the session at the terminal.

• Discount codes give a percent or a flat amount off. A code can apply everywhere or to one payment-link page. It can have a use limit and an expiry date. Staff can change the limit later, but not the code, type or scope.
• Six email switches turn each notice on or off for every family. Payment Received, Payment Receipt, Refund Processed and Payment Plan Failed start on. Payment Plan Reminder and Payment Overdue start off.
• Manual mode hides the online actions for a parish that takes only cash and checks.
• Roles. Only staff with the Payments role, or a global administrator, open the console.