Getting Paid (Card Payments)

Connect your Stripe account once and every invoice you send includes a Pay Now link. Your customer taps it, pays by card on a secure page, and the invoice marks itself paid in DispatchCore — usually within seconds.

The important part: the money goes directly to your Stripe account and out to your bank. DispatchCore is never in the middle of it. There is no balance we hold, nothing to release, and no waiting on us to pass your money along. You are the merchant of record, exactly as if you'd set up card payments yourself.

We charge 0% during beta. You pay Stripe's standard processing rate on each transaction and nothing to us.

Go to Settings → Payments and click Connect Stripe. You'll be handed off to Stripe to create or link an account — they'll ask for your business details, bank account for payouts, and identity verification. This is Stripe's own onboarding, not ours, and it typically takes 5–10 minutes.

Come back to Settings → Payments and you'll see your status. Two things have to be true before you can take money:

• Charges enabled — you can accept payments
• Payouts enabled — Stripe can send money to your bank

Stripe sometimes enables one before the other, or asks for extra documents partway through. If either is still off, finish the remaining steps in Stripe — the same Settings page links straight into your Stripe dashboard.

Invoices you already sent aren't left behind. When onboarding completes, DispatchCore fills in pay links for invoices that went out before you connected, so you don't have to resend them.

The pay link goes out in the invoice email, and you can text it too. It opens a page showing your business name, the invoice number, what the work was, and the amount due — then a button to pay by card.

Card details are entered on a page hosted by Stripe. They never pass through DispatchCore, which means there's no card data in our system to be exposed.

Your customer doesn't need an account, an app, or a password. It's a link and a card.

You can collect a deposit up front and bill the balance later. Send a deposit invoice, take payment, then send the final invoice when the work is done — the deposit is credited automatically, so the customer is only asked for what's actually left.

Deposits are not taxed twice: the customer pays exactly the deposit figure you typed, and tax is collected once on the final invoice.

If a customer somehow reaches an old pay link for an invoice that's already been paid or voided, the payment is refused rather than charged again.

Issue refunds from your Stripe dashboard — full or partial. DispatchCore picks it up automatically and records it on the invoice, and your paid totals adjust to match.

The invoice keeps its paid status with the refund recorded alongside, because the invoice was paid — that's the honest history, and it keeps your records straight against Stripe's.

One thing to handle yourself: if you use QuickBooks, a refund is not reversed there automatically. The payment pushed to QuickBooks stays until you void it in QuickBooks.

If a customer disputes a charge, Stripe pulls the money back and notifies you directly. DispatchCore does not currently know about disputes — the invoice will keep reading as paid.

So if you get a dispute notice from Stripe, handle it in Stripe, and update the invoice in DispatchCore by hand so your numbers stay honest. We're aware this should be automatic and it's on the list.

Card isn't required. Open the invoice and use Mark as Paid, choosing how the money arrived — cash, check, or card taken elsewhere. Technicians can do this from the mobile app, so a check handed over in a driveway gets recorded before the tech drives off.

A marked-paid invoice drops out of your outstanding balance the same as a card payment would.

DispatchCore sends a daily payment reminder for invoices that are past due, so chasing money isn't a job you have to remember to do. Reminders carry the same pay link, and they quote the balance due — not the original total — so a customer who already paid a deposit isn't asked for the full amount again.