Archive for May, 2009

Send Form Results to Multiple Email Addresses

We’ve updated FormSmarts form builder and form processing back-end to allow several email subscribers for each form. We’ll be releasing more subscription mechanisms later this month.

Before using an email address as a form recipient, you first need to add it to your account, and verify it. You can change the recipients of a form in the Form Details screen of your account.

The number of email subscribers allowed for each form depends on your plan.

Posted on May 31st, 2009 in form builder.
4 Comments
Tags: collaboration, form recipient, form results

How to Make a PayPal Form

FormSmarts PayPal Integration is your best option when you need to collect data and get a payment on a form. It makes it very easy to receive PayPal payments on your forms, while giving you the power, flexibility and ease of use of a full-featured online form builder.

For example, you can easily build:

• an event registration form
• a membership form with recurring fees
• a booking form (booking form demo)
• an online order form (order form demo)
• a subscription form with recurring payments (PayPal subscription demo)
• a PayPal donation form or recurring donation form
• and any other online forms with which you want to collect fees with PayPal

Note: The demos above are hosted on FormSmarts, but you can also embed a form on your own website with the code snippet given by the form builder.

How to Create a PayPal Form in 3 Minutes: Video Tutorial

Receive Payments on a Form

To allow people to pay on a form:

1. Sign up for a FormSmarts Business account and create a form with the form builder
2. Add radio buttons, a drop-down list or a checkbox, and enter the description and fees (or item price) formatted as Item Description ($30 USD), as shown on the screenshot below.
3. To complete PayPal integration, add your Notification URL to your PayPal account.

It’s as simple as that. We’ll pick up the items, fees or amounts and quantities that are selected on the form, and we’ll redirect the user to a pre-filled page on PayPal where they can enter their credit card info or sign in to pay with their PayPal account.

Payments are sent to the PayPal account matching your FormSmarts login email. Make sure the email address you use for PayPal and FormSmarts are the same. You can change your FormSmarts login if needed.

Charge for Multiple Items on a Form

You can as easily charge for several items on a form by adding more drop-down lists or radio buttons formatted as just described.

Add a Quantity to a Fee or Priced Item

There are several ways to let your customers choose a quantity for a fee or priced item, for example the number of tickets or guests on an event registration form.

The simplest way is to combine the ticket price or fee and a quantity selector into a single drop-down, as illustrated below:

If you want to allow your customers to buy an open-ended number of items, use a quantity box instead.

Build a Subscription Form with Recurring Payment

A membership or subscription involves paying a recurring amount each billing cycle until the subscription ends or is canceled. This article covers how to create a subscription form in detail.

In most cases, you just need to add the recurring fee to a form as Monthly Subscription ($19.99 USD/month)

You can also use a recurring payment to allow your customers to pay in installments. A payment in installments is a recurring payment where the number of payments is fixed.

The syntax is Payment in 12 Installments (12x$9.99 USD/month), as show in this demo.

Create a Donation Form

FormSmarts Payment Integration also supports PayPal Donations and recurring donations.

To create a contribution form:

• Add a Text Box to your form with the field name formatted as My Donation ($ USD)
• Set the field’s allowed content to Positive Number

You can add multiple donation boxes to a form to allow contributions towards multiple projects or causes on the same form like on this demo.

Offer a Discount on a PayPal Form

FormSmarts allows you to offer discounts on your online payments forms.

We support three types of discounts:

• Discount for a fixed amount (flat discount)
• Discount percentage
• Discount codes, which may be either for a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of the total amount due

Payment in Other Currencies

We demonstrate PayPal forms on this page with amounts in US dollars (USD) with a the dollar symbol ($), but FormSmarts also supports other currencies.

To specify another currency, change the three-letter currency code and currency symbol in the item’s description.

For example, use GA Ticket (€60 EUR) to get a paid in Euros, VIP Ticket (£60 GBP) for a payment in British Pounds, and Registration Fee ($60 CAD) to collect a fee in Canadian dollars.

The text of the button inviting the user to proceed to payment is displayed in their preferred language, in any of the supported languages.

How Payment Integration Works

Payment Flow

1. A customer fills out the registration form for your event and picks the registration package and extras she wants
2. After reviewing her submission and confirming, she taps the Proceed to Payment button
3. FormSmarts directs her to a PayPal checkout page where she can choose to sign in to her PayPal account or enter her credit card detail
4. PayPal confirms the payment is successful and, if you’ve set a form Return URL on FormSmarts, provides a button for the user to navigate to a thank you page on your site
5. PayPal sends an automated message to FormSmarts notifying us of a new payment
6. FormSmarts verifies that the amount paid is correct and confirms the registration
7. We send email notifications to the destination emails of the form
8. We also send a payment confirmation to the registrant, which she can use as an e-ticket
9. You can now access the registration online and see it in Excel reports.

How We Identify the PayPal Account Receiving Funds

FormSmarts directs payments to the PayPal account under the email address you use to sign in to FormSmarts.

To ensure money is sent to the correct PayPal account, your primary PayPal email address must match your FormSmarts login. You can easily change your login if needed.

To avoid users having to enter the same information twice if paying by credit card (on the form and on the payment screen), FormSmarts tries to identify the person’s first name, last name, email, postal address, and country provided on the form, and if available pass them to PayPal.

• Make sure you call the First Name and Last Name fields exactly like this.
• To allow FormSmarts to recognize an address and populate the billing address on PayPal, mame the relevant fields like on this form or this one.

Redirect Users to Your Site After Payment

If you want to redirect users to a Thank You page on your website after they have completed payment on PayPal, visit the Form Details screen of the form builder and set the Return URL of the form to your site’s URL.

Posted on May 5th, 2009 in form builder.
53 Comments
Tags: payment integration, paypal, paypal form