Pay by Text

Thank you for your interest in the Bill & Pay solution - Pay by Text

Over 60% of customers prefer using their mobile devices to make payments. Customers will love the option and convenience to be notified and pay their invoices by text.

Pay by Text will improve your cashflow and workflow, increase customer satisfaction and on-time payments, and reduce payment support calls simultaneously. Pay by Text links and payment options have a 45% higher response rate than direct mail. In addition, customers are more likely to open the text message verses email with 94% viewed within 3 minutes.

Pay by Text is an opt-in customer solution to easily pay invoices via text messaging. Customers will quickly pay invoices in as little as 2 messages using a simple number response with Y / N answers to confirm and process their payment.

Notifications sent by Text from Bill & Pay

• New Invoice notifications
• Payment confirmations
• AutoPay nods
• Invoice and past-due reminders

Getting started

Turn on the Pay by Text feature

Within Bill & Pay

1. Click Advanced Options
2. Texting and click to activate

To Know: When you activate Pay by Text, you are assigned a phone number which the texts are sent from. Your customers will likely save this phone number and name it so they will know who it’s from, what the payment is for, and that it is not a scam for future texts. If you Turn OFF Pay by Text and later turn it on again, you will be assigned a different phone number which may cause issues on the customer side. Communication to your customers is critical. 

Using Pay by Text

Whether the customer is existing or new, ONLY the customer can add a phone number and agree to receive text for Pay by Text. If you try to send a text prior to this, nothing will be sent.

Existing customers who have a Bill & Pay payment portal login

1. They will see the option to add a phone number and agree to receive payment by text messages.
2. Once their phone number is added, you can opt to send them text by choosing so under Customer Options. You can choose email and/or text message per notice or reminder.
3. The customer MUST have an existing credit card and/or ACH account saved to the payment portal. If they do not, they are required to save one while making a payment on the payer portal. After which, that saved payment method will be available for Pay by Text with future payments.

Customers without a payment portal login 

1. You can send them either an invite for the portal or email them the invoice to pay online.
2. The customer is required to create an account and complete the opt-in option to add a phone number for Pay by Text.
3. Customers are required to save a payment method while making a payment on the payer portal. After which, that saved payment method will be available for Pay by Text with future payments. If the first saved payment method was a credit card, and they want to add an ACH account: They need to process a payment while saving that ACH account on the payment portal for it to be available for Pay by Text.

Pricing

Pay by Text fees will appear on the normal monthly billing statement from Bill & Pay.

First month is FREE! This allows you to try it out prior to paying for it.

$10.00/month includes 500 messages. 

Messages over 500 are $0.015/message.

FAQ

Can a customer use this feature if they do not have an internet connection?

To make or receive calls or messages, an Internet connection is required. You can use Wi-Fi and/or cellular data. You can also use a wireless hot-spot or a data stick.

Will I see these payments in Bill & Pay like other payments?

Yes. They will show on the Payments screen in Bill & Pay and if connected to QuickBooks, post normally.

How will I know what invoice is pending to be paid by text?

Several screens like Customers, Invoice List, Unpaid Invoices, etc. will have an extra column on the right side called Text Codes. The code they need to enter to pay the invoice will be in that column.

Will I be able to tell what payments were made by Pay by Text?

Yes. When you click on the payment, you will see SMS Payment and the phone number that made the payment.

Will I be able to edit the verbiage on the texts sent by Pay by Text?

No. The text messages will contain your company name as it appears in Bill & Pay and a link if they want to pay the invoice on the Bill & Pay Payer Portal instead. You can, however, customize the Bill & Pay Payer Portal.

Payment Plans

Bill & Pay payment plans allow you to setup installment payments against a single invoice. You setup the payment amount and frequency per the screen shots below.   If you need the payment amounts to vary, you can use the "Schedule Multiple Payments" button found on the top of the view invoice screen.  Click the "?" for more details.  

1.  In your Bill & Pay account, select the customer name from the customer list and click “Payment Plan” from the customer detail screen.  Another option is to select the invoice from the "unpaid invoice" list in the left navigation panel.

2.  All open invoices for that customer are displayed, select the invoice to create payment plan for.

3.  Fill-in the Payment Plan fields to select your down payment (optional), schedule/frequency, starting date and payment amount.  Select if the payments can be made using ACH or Credit Card.  

The preview window displays the details of the payment plan.   The final payment will auto calculate to pay the remaining balance. 

4.  Select if the payment plan should be emailed to the customer to approve and they enter their payment account info OR select “Approve Plan” if the business is going to enter the payment account information.

5.  Payments are automatically run per the payment plan details.  If the biller is using QuickBooks or XERO, the payments will auto post into the accounting software and are applied to the invoice.

6.  If the biller approves the payment plan, the customer can see the details in a new tab called Payment Plan as shown below. 

The following screens apply only if the customer is being emailed the payment plan to approve and enter their payment account info.

The customer receives an email notifying them of the payment plan.

After the customer logs in to their Bill & Pay account, they see the payment plan details for the invoice and they click to approve.

The customer selects the payment option.

The customer enters their payment account details.  They can enter credit card or bank account if the merchant is setup for both.  Bill & Pay provides an ACH application.

Customer authorizes the payment.

You can also allow customers to create payment plans themselves. You must enable it in Advanced Options / Payment Plans under the "Customer Create Payment Plans" heading. Once enabled, the customer can go to their "Invoices & Payments" page to view an invoice, and it will show the "Create Payment Plan" button above the invoice.

Payment Convenience Fees

Convenience fees make it easy for your business to charge an additional fee for certain types of payment transactions.

Convenience Fee Calculation

Convenience fees are calculated for each transaction based on the following four settings:

• Base fee. This is a fixed fee amount that will be applied.
• Percentage. A fee calculated as a percentage of the total payment amount and added to the base fee.
• Minimum fee amount. An amount that is the minimum that will be charged after adding the base fee and percentage.
• Maximum fee amount. An amount that limits the maximum amount of fee that will be charged.

You can mix these four settings in any way you want and set any of them to zero to not use that setting. Here are some example scenarios:

• Charge a $1.00 base fee along with a 2% fee with no minimum or maximum. On a $100.00 payment the customer will be charged an additional $3.00 fee.
• Charge a 1% convenience fee with a minimum fee of $1.00. On a $50.00 payment the customer will be charged an additional $1.00 fee because the minimum fee will be enforced. On a $200.00 payment the customer will be charged an additional $2.00.

Types of Payments

You can specify separate convenience fee settings for each of the following types of transactions:

• ACH one-time payments.
• Credit Card one-time payments.
• ACH auto pay payments.
• Credit Card auto pay payments.

You can set different convenience fee rates for each of these payment methods or choose to charge a fee for some of them and not for others.

A credit card convenience fee will be displayed once "Credit Card" is chosen as the payment method.

For the ACH and Credit Card one-time payment convenience fee types, the fee will not be displayed until the payer chooses a payment method. You can also specify an up front convenience fee setting for one-time payments that will apply to both ACH and Credit Card payments and will be displayed on the invoice payment amounts page where the payer chooses which invoices to pay and how much to pay on them.

An up front convenience fee on the invoice payment amounts page.

Other Convenience Fee Options

When convenience fees are enabled you also need to decide how you want to describe the fee to your customers. For example, it could be called a "Convenience Fee", "Service Fee", "Administration Fee", or whatever name best fits your business model.

Convenience fees are recorded as a Sales Receipt. The Sales Receipt has a line item for the convenience fee. You must create a line item that will be used to record payments received for convenience fees.

The biller has the option to uncheck the convenience fee on the "Accept Payment" screen in the Biller Control Panel when entering a customer's payment.

Enabling Convenience Fees

Enabling this option costs a one-time $50 activation fee and an additional $0.10 for each transaction that has the convenience fee applied.

Contact customer service to enable convenience fees or ask any questions you have about this feature.

NOTE: At this time, convenience fees do not apply to payment plans, subscription payments, or when using "Schedule Multiple Payments" for an invoice in Bill & Pay. Additionally, the rules for adding convenience fees to credit card transactions vary by state and is illegal in some states. Please check your individual state laws before you begin to use the Bill & Pay convenience fee feature.

Click Pay and Payer Logins

There are two different ways that your customers, we refer to them as payers, can make payments:

• Click Pay
• Payer Login

Click Pay

Click Pay puts a payment link in your email messages sent to your customers. They click the link in your email and are immediately taken to the Make Payment page without having to create and account or remember a login user name and password.

The benefits of Click Pay are obvious. You get paid quickly by your customers because they don't have to create an account and they don't have to remember an account login.

Payer Login

During Click Pay your customers are informed that they can create an account or login if they already have an account. The benefits of your customers logging in are:

• Bill & Pay can remember their last payment account for them.
• Pay more than one invoice with a single payment choosing how to split the payment.
• See past invoices and payment history.
• View invoice PDFs with full line item detail.
• See and approve payment plans.
• Approve automatic payments.
• Choose up to three email addresses where Bill & Pay will send messages to.

Add Features to Click Pay

Some of the features that are not available to customers in Click Pay by default can be added. You can send a request to customer service to add any or all of the following features to Click Pay for your customers so they do not require a login to use them:

• Allow Click Pay users to pay more than one invoice. They will be able to choose to pay any or all invoices with an open balance in a single transaction.
• Allow Click Pay users to use "Invoices & Payments" page. This gives the customer access to past invoices and payment history. They will be able to view all invoice PDFs with full line item detail.
• Allow Click Pay users to use "Auto Pay" page. The customer will be able to approve and modify auto pay approval for their account.
• Allow Click Pay users to use "Payment Plans" page. The customer will be able to see and approve payment plans you have created.

By default all of these features require your customers to create a user name and password and login to protect their privacy. However, your business may decide that these features are not a privacy concern for your customers and that enabling them is a benefit.

Prevent Payer Logins

If you want to prevent your customers from creating a login you can request that account creation not be offered to your customers when using Click Pay. Some possible reasons you may choose this are:

• You do not want Bill & Pay to ever remember the customer's payment account information.
• You only want the customer to pay their invoices. You do not want them to look at past invoices or payments.

Disabling Click Pay

Bill & Pay's default configuration is a good balance between maintaining customer privacy protections and making payments as easy as possible to make. However, if your business or customers demand a higher level of privacy you can also request that Click Pay be disabled for your account. Customers will have to create a payer login and use that login everytime they make a payment.

If you choose to have Click Pay disabled, you can use the Invite Customers feature in Bill & Pay to invite your customers to create accounts. The new invoice notification email will also instruct them to create an account if they have not done so yet.

What is ACH?

ACH stands for Automated Clearing House. Your business can use ACH to accept payments from your customers' checking our savings bank account at rates much lower than accepting credit card payments.

How ACH Works

When a customer uses Bill & Pay to make a payment to your business using ACH, the customer will enter the name on their account, their bank routing number, and the account number. All of this information can be found on a blank check as illustrated in the image below.

At the end of the business day a request for funds is sent to the bank of each of your customers that made a payment to you that day using ACH. Those funds are then received and deposited to your bank account.

Why ACH is Better than a Check

ACH is a better way to receive payment from your customers because:

• You don't have to endorse each payment check.
• You don't have to manually record each payment check. The payment will be automatically recorded for you and properly credited to the invoices the customer wanted to pay.
• You don't have to make a trip to the bank.
• You get paid faster because your customer doesn't have to mail the check to you. This also saves your customers time and money on postage.

ACH Saves You Money Compared to Credit Cards

When you receive a payment through Bill & Pay by ACH you pay a single flat transaction fee and no "discount rate" on the first $5,000.00 of each payment transaction. Credit Cards cost a transaction fee plus a "discount rate" on the entire amount. A discount rate is a percentage you pay to the credit card companies to accept credit cards.

Bill & Pay Also Works with Credit Cards

We realize that the most important thing for your business is to get paid by any method your customer will use to pay you. That is why Bill & Pay also works with all the major credit card brands through many industry standard merchant gateways.

Bill & Pay allows you to accept both ACH and Credit Card payments through a single product. Payments made using ACH will start saving your business money right away. The convenience and time savings Bill & Pay brings your business will save you money on every payment made, even by credit card.

Emails Sent Tracking

Bill & Pay includes tools to track the delivery of all the emails sent for your business including new invoice notifications, payment due and over due reminders, and payment confirmations.

Email Log

Bill & Pay retains a one month log of all email messages sent to your customers on your behalf. What we log:

• What customer an email was sent to
• The customer's email address the email was sent to
• The date and time and it was sent
• The subject and content of the email message
• The invoice file attachment included with the message

Your business may have a need to retain sent email logs for a period of time longer than one month. Please contact customer service to inquire about increasing the duration of email log retention.

View by Customer

To view all of the emails sent to a specific customer go to that customer's page in Bill & Pay and click the "Emails Sent" button.

The Customer Emails Sent page will list all of the emails in your sent email log with the status of the email, the date and time the email was sent, the email address the email was sent to, and the subject of the email.

Click on any of the emails in the Customer Emails Sent list to view the email details. The details page will show you the email message the way it looked to your customer when they received it. If there was an attachment with the email, such as an invoice PDF, then you will also be able to view the file that was attached to the email.

Reporting

You can generate a report of all the emails you have sent in a date range that you specify. Go to Reports and click the "Emails Sent to Customers" report. You can choose the start and end dates for the report along with which email status types you want to include in the report. Possible statuses are sent, opened, and error.

The report that is generated will list all of the emails sent in the selected date range with the email status, date and time sent, the email address it was sent to, the customer the email was sent to, and the email's subject.

A great use for the emails sent report is to generate a report of all the emails you sent in the last month that have a status of "Error". This will give you a list of customers that have email addresses that you are unable to delivery messages to. You can use the report is a list of customers to contact to get an updated email from. Keeping your customer email list up-to-date and accurate will help improve your cash flow.

Email Status

There are three possible email statuses:

1. Sent - Bill & Pay has sent the email for delivery. If the email can not be delivered it will move from the Sent status to the Error status.
2. Opened - The customer opened the email. You can use this status to verify that your customer received the email and looked at it. Click on a sent email to view it in detail to see the date and time the customer first opened the email.
3. Error - The email could not be delivered. Click on an email with an error to view a detailed explanation of why it could not be delivered. The most common reason for this is trying to send an email to an address that is not valid.

How the Opened Status Works

Bill & Pay includes images in the emails we send to your customers. When your customer looks at the email and the images in the email are loaded it notifies our server that they are reading the email message. This makes it possible for us to mark the email as opened and know the date and time when the customer first opened it.

Many email readers, including most email readers on mobile devices, automatically load images when reading email messages. Customers that use one of these email readers will have emails you send them marked as 'Opened' when they read them. Some email readers, such as Outlook, do not load images by default as a privacy protection for the user. Emails to these customers will remain in a "Sent" status unless the customer adds your business email address you send emails from to their "Safe Sender" list or they tell their email reader to load images for the email message they are reading.

This means that an email status of "Opened" indicates your customer has opened your email message. However, a status of "Sent" means it was sent to them and they may or may not have opened it.

Longer Email Retention

By default, email history is stored in Bill & Pay for the past 30 days. Some businesses may be required to keep a record of messages sent to customers for regulatory reasons. If this is the case for your business, contact customer service to increase the sent email log retention period for your business. We retain a record of what your email looked like at the time it was delivered. Even if an invoice is modified at some point after an email is sent, we retain a record of how that invoice appeared at the time the email was sent.