Turning off card payments on an invoice or estimate

In this article, you'll learn how to stop a customer from paying one invoice, or one estimate's deposit, by card online. It's useful when you've agreed on cash, a check or some other arrangement and don't want a Pay button in front of them.

Cards are on by default for everything you send. You turn them off one document at a time, on the Send form, just before it goes out. There's no switch that turns them off for the whole company.

Note: The box only matters once Stripe is connected. Without Stripe, nobody can pay by card online anyway. See Connecting Stripe to take online payments.

To open the Send form for an invoice:

  1. In the menu, click Invoices and open the invoice.
  2. Click Send invoice. If it's already gone out, the button says Send invoice again.

To open the Send form for an estimate:

  1. In the menu, click Estimates and open the estimate.
  2. Click Send. If it's already gone out, the button says Send Again.
Note: Once an estimate has been turned into a job, or locked after the customer approved it, it has no Send button, so there's nothing to change on it.

Turning off cards on an invoice

  1. Open the Send form for the invoice.
  2. Pick Via email or Via SMS, and check who it's going to.
  3. Under Let client pay with:, untick Credit card.
  4. Click Send email or Send text.
Unticking Credit card before sending an invoice

Your customer still gets the message with the link, and they can still open the invoice in their portal. Here's what changes:

  • The invoice has no Pay invoice button.
  • If they reach the payment page some other way, it says Payment is arranged directly and gives them a Back to the invoice link.

They still owe the balance. When they pay you, record it yourself as a cash or other offline payment.

Note: When you open the Send form from the invoice's own page on a desktop (Invoices, then the invoice), it remembers your last choice. If you sent it without cards, Credit card starts unticked, so sending it again won't switch cards back on without you noticing. To allow cards later, tick the box and send it again. If you send from somewhere else, like a job's Collect payment drawer, the box starts ticked, so check it every time.

On a phone-sized browser, Credit card is a switch instead of a box, the button at the bottom just says Send, and the switch always starts on.

Note: On the free plan, a text goes out from your own phone and doesn't carry the Credit card setting with it. Send by email if you need cards off.

Turning off the card deposit on an estimate

You'll only see this option on an estimate that asks for a deposit. On an estimate, the deposit is the only thing a customer pays by card, so if there's no deposit, there's nothing to turn off. The box is on the desktop web only. The phone-sized web page and the app's estimate send screen don't have it.

  1. Open the Send form for the estimate.
  2. Pick Via email or Via SMS, and check the recipient.
  3. Under Let client pay the deposit with:, untick Credit card.
  4. Click Send email or Send text.
Tip: The Credit card box is hidden while you're editing the message template. Click Save template or Cancel and it comes back.
Unticking the card deposit before sending an estimate

Your customer can still view the estimate, sign it and approve it. With cards off:

  • The button says Approve instead of Approve & pay deposit, and the signing drawer is called Sign & Approve instead of Sign & Pay. They sign and approve, and there's no payment step.
  • After that, the estimate shows Approved — the deposit will be arranged with you.
  • In the CRM, the estimate moves to Approved - Pending Deposit. A deposit invoice is still created, and it has no Pay button either.

Collecting the deposit is up to you. Once the deposit invoice is paid in full, the estimate moves on from Approved - Pending Deposit, to Won when the customer signed it, and the office gets a "Deposit paid" notice.

The estimate's Send form remembers this setting too, the next time you send that estimate.

On the phone app

The app's Send invoice screen has the same Let client pay with: section, with a Credit card switch. Turn it off before you tap Send.

Warning: The app doesn't remember your last choice. The Credit card switch always starts on when you open the send screen in the app, even if you sent that invoice without cards before. If you're re-sending an invoice that should stay card-free, turn the switch off before you tap Send.

For now, you can only turn off the card deposit on an estimate from the web on a desktop. The app's estimate send screen doesn't have that option.

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