Upstock gives you the flexibility to take card payment at different times. To get started, go to Settings › Payment terms › Card payment options.
There are a few options available. Here are the pros and cons of each, plus how they affect your workflow.
Payment on approval
If you select this option, payment will be taken when you approve an order. The advantage of this option is that you collect payment before sending any goods, so there’s no risk of the customer not paying.
The disadvantage is that no further changes can be made to the order. E.g. if you discover during fulfilment that you don’t have enough stock, the customer has already been charged, so you’ll have to process a refund.
Payment on shipment
If you select this option, payment will be taken when you mark an order as shipped. The advantage of this option is that you have the flexibility to make changes to the order during fulfilment. E.g. if you're out of stock, you can adjust the order before payment is taken.
The disadvantage is that there’s a risk payment will fail after you’ve processed the order.
Net days
The net days option lets you delay when payment is taken. You can set it to be delayed for a set amount of days after an order is shipped (up to 60 days), or for a specific day of the following month.
Net days is not yet on general release. If this is a feature you would like early access to, please chat to our team.
Important: delayed payments only apply to customers that have an Upstock account. You can still request payment from customers that don’t use Upstock by sending a payment link, however their payment will be processed immediately.
Similar to taking payment on shipment, this option gives you the flexibility to adjust orders before payment is taken.
If a payment is delay it will show in the scheduled status on an order. You can see when payment will be taken in the payments menu.
Using payment terms
You don’t have to choose one option for all customers. Our payment terms feature gives you the flexibility to set different options for different groups of customers.
E.g. if you have a small group of late payers, you could take payment for their orders up front, when their orders are approved. For other customers, you could take payment when their orders are shipped. This lets you mitigate the risk of failed payments, while giving yourself the flexibility to adjust orders for most customers.
Taking payment manually
If an order is set to take payment on or after shipment, you have the flexibility to manually process the payment earlier. You can do this from the payments menu on an order.
Manually taking payment is another way to mitigate the risk of fail payments. E.g. when you are sure there are no further adjustments needed to an order, you can take the payment, then continue to fulfil the order if the payment is successful.
In this way, you can ensure payment is taken before shipping any goods, however it adds another step to your fulfilment workflow.