Payment Link on Invoice

Ruthie

Hi,
I'm not sure if this is even a feature, but I am wondering if there is an option to add a payment link to a notification or invoice.  We require a 50% deposit to reserve a booking.  I'd like clients that have a pending booking with us to get an email with a link to somewhere they can enter their credit card information and they will be charged the 50%.  I'd like this to happen automatically without any user interaction.  We previously used Zoho Invoice which had this feature and it would be very helpful if it was part of Checkfront.

As far as I can tell the only way to currently take payments is by manually entering the information into the Admin area.

Can someone clarify this for me?

ella

Hi Ruthie,

Once you have configured your payment gateway, enable your online payments from your website via Manage / Ecommerce.  You can set the deposit amount there.

Ruthie

Thanks.  I've done that, but the notification email (with invoice attached) doesn't have a Pay Now option for clients to click on...

I apologize if I'm missing something really simple.

Ruthie

Hi Everyone,

So I figured out a way to embed a payment link into notifications.  It's not really a hack, but I had to figure out the URL by testing a client booking from the frontend first.

So, the trick is to add this as a URL link, or just copy and paste it for the text version:

https://<checkfront-client-name>.checkfront.com/www/payment/{$BOOKING_ID}

This will then create a URL to the payment option for the client's booking ID.  

In my case, I setup a notification for PENDING (for when I manually input a booking) that will email the client the URL so they can then click and pay either the deposit necessary to reserve the unit OR the full amount if they are within the 30-days-prior windows.

I hope this helps someone else out!

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Unknown

This is pretty clever. 

It looks like the payment option is through Checkfront itself.  I've never seen this before.  Does checkfront serve as an actual payment gateway crediting the amount to your account, or does it pass the information on through your selected payment gateway (paypal, google, etc.)?

Ruthie

It uses your payment gateway of choice as far as I can tell. 

As a side note, if you are using the visual editor for the notifications you might have to switch to the code view and add the { and } marks because the visual editor will occasionally turn those into unicode.

k_b

Hi Ruthie, is this still working for you now? The links on my invoices go through to a 'content expired' page.

robburns

Likewise when I try the same.

I'm just trying to get a payment link into the notifications.

Checkfront? Can you help?

ella

You can use {$BOOKING_URL} in your email.  This includes the authorization token in the url to allow customer access to the booking page for payment, or to review the invoice.

robburns

Thanks to both ella (above) and Daniel from Checkfront support.

This problem is now resolved for us.

robburns

This problem has now re-appeared.

We have a booking forwarded to us from our client and the payment link which worked prior to the release of the latest version of Checkfront worked just fine.

Can anyone at Checkfront explain what's changed and how we can restore the payment link in emails?

robburns

Just re-read my comment. I haven't explained in sufficient detail:

We have a booking forwarded to us from our client and the Paypal payment link which worked prior to the release of the latest version of Checkfront worked just fine and sent users to a payment page.

Now it simply links to an invoice and there is no way for a customer to pay.

This looks really unprofessional.

Can anyone at Checkfront explain what's changed and how we can restore the payment link in emails?

Jason

I can't reproduce this Rob.  Can you forward in the e-mail to support so we can have a look at the link.  We haven't changed how this process works. 

If there is a balance due the customer will be shown the invoice along with the option to pay.