Has anyone decided to make the jump and add a dedicated payment page to their site where they have everyone pay through?
I don't like the idea of fees for ALL our income, but it would just be so much easier than the combination of check/cash/paypal/square that we use now trying to track everything.
I am definitely moving towards that. Currently accepting payments and invoicing via Paypal through Tave 3.0. Some people have insisted on using check even so.
I've thought about getting a setup like that. It would be great to have a a system that could track client A owes $1500, and they could make payments whenever they wanted.
I'm 100% credit card through PayPal. For some event stuff I use square. It's is so convienent to have everything coming into one place and being able to track it all from there. The only change I don't like is with PayPal you have to make site you download your monthly statements now because Rey don't keep the entire year like they used to. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) otherwise it has made things so much easier. Thinking about getting the PayPal cc swipe to eliminate square. Then I'll be cooking with crisco.
ckhagen wrote:
All my clients pay with credit cards through the ShootQ client portal (attached to my merchant account).
This! Works especially well if you shoot a lot of destination weddings. I don't do as many as Candice, but even if they live in town, the online portal/payment is easier for everyone involved. Make it easy for them to spend their money. My online cc transactions are run though Authorize.net.
Don't you all get crushed by ~3% fees? lol we're pretty much all checks, since we're not willing to give up thousands of dollars to save each client 10 minutes. We haven't had any complaints.
-Lincoln
Thanks guys... For those that use almost entirely credit cards, two questions for you:
1What system do you use?
- I'm thinking of integrating Stripe into our site for a cohesive system, but that's 2.9%. On 40 weddings a year that's a lot of $$.
- Something like Authorize seems good, but it's more complicated and has more auxiliary fees.
2. How do you track your client invoices quickly when the CC fees always throw off the amount?
I use NoblePay for merchant services and I use their Authorize.net terminal option. Auth.net also allows me to take CCs in person with my iPad via their free app. The card fees are all over the map depending on the type of card. Certain Amex and rewards cards are through the roof on fees, but that's standard fare in the CC business.
The invoices are easy to handle for me because Michael is able to just download everything into QuickBooks straight from shootQ and auth.net. He's pretty well versed in QuickBooks accounting though, so I don't know how hard it might be for someone who's new to doing it all this way. I've been doing it like this for 4 years. And yes, Steve I would go nuts trying to handle so many destination clients any other way. When I first started I was doing contracts and checks and such via FedEx or email. It was torture.
Tony Hoffer wrote:
Thanks guys... For those that use almost entirely credit cards, two questions for you:
1What system do you use?
- I'm thinking of integrating Stripe into our site for a cohesive system, but that's 2.9%. On 40 weddings a year that's a lot of $$.
- Something like Authorize seems good, but it's more complicated and has more auxiliary fees.
We use Authorize.NET for processing through our accounts with Midwest Transaction Group. I think our qualified Visa rate is 2.35% and the total additional fees run about $12-14 per month. Their API for integrating with something web-based isn't the best I've used, but it's not the worst either. Stripe's looks really good, but I have the other working and see no reason to switch.
2. How do you track your client invoices quickly when the CC fees always throw off the amount?
The fees are never assessed until around the 4th of the month, so I account for those as just a line item in the bank account ledger in QB. In QB the charge itself goes into an account titled Authorize.NET initially, then is transferred to the bank account when we receive funds from the processor (1-2 business days for Visa/MC and 5-7 for AmEx). That way invoices always reflect their true amount and fees appear on an expense report.
I use Elavon. 1.99% And when I first input the card data I also set up automatic payments so there's no having to get the client to make another payment or reminders or anything like that.
Tony Hoffer wrote:
1What system do you use?
- I'm thinking of integrating Stripe into our site for a cohesive system, but that's 2.9%. On 40 weddings a year that's a lot of $$.
Then raise your price $40+ to make up for it. Doesn't even have to be on the front end. Could be a bump here and a bump there. Or institute a charge for something that you're currently doing for free. A videographer colleague of mine started charging for inserting a photo montage in his videos he used to include for free, and even though it's still pretty much a standard practice for videographers to include it. Results were he worked a lot less hours and the couples who wanted it put around $7000 in his pocket that year. He's doing something like 30 weddings at an average of $7000 each, so if his focus was on saving a 1% cost, he'd only be seeing a $2,100 increase in profits instead of making that $2,100 plus an additional $4,900, all of it pure profit, as per my advice.
Cash, check or Square here. I'd never use PayPal for wedding photography. It's far too easy for people to chargeback reversals. I have another "digital" business where I fight that constantly. Those of you using PayPal better think again. It's only a matter of time before you wake up one morning and find an email saying thousands of dollars have been swiped from your bank account. Trust me.
In Canada we have a lovely thing called Interac e-transfer where clients can send money by email through their online banking. Free to me. They pay $1.50 transfer fee. Love it!!
