Archive for the ‘payment form’ Category

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How to Accept Payments in Installments for Your Events

Allowing your customers to pay in installments on a form is as easy as collecting a one-off payment.

Payment in Installments

Consumers are increasingly demanding to be able to pay for goods and services in installments. If you organize an event that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars, you may have to provide an option for attendees to pay in several installments.

To offer a payment plan on a form, format the description of the fee, the number of installments and the amount of each installment as: Pay in 3 installments (3x$50 USD/month).

You can also propose weekly or bi-monthly installments or other payment plans that suit your needs. Remember to set up the form to collect a payment.

Try the demo

Payment Flow for Payments in Installments

The payment process for a payment in installments is slightly different from a standard payment:

  • A registrants pays the amount of the first installment ($50 in this example) immediately when they submit the form
  • When the payment goes through, FormSmarts sends the registration details to the destination emails of the form and also sends a confirmation email to the registrant
  • The registrant is charged the same amount a month later and again the next month
  • FormSmarts notifies form recipients of each installment payment
  • You can view a registration and all associated payments on FormSmarts

Note that a payment plan is not a credit or buy now pay later scheme.

Payment in installments are not available with Starter accounts.

Adding Check & Cash Payment Options to a Payment Form

It’s now much simpler to allow form users who prefer not to pay online to pay later by check, cash on site or with their favorite payment app.

Most FormSmarts members who collect fees on their registration and membership forms want guests to complete the whole process online. If all guests register and pay online, the event organizer doesn’t need to manually verify everyone has paid the correct amount because we do this automatically.

But we know that a number of customers need to allow some guests to register online and pay later by check or cash on site. FormSmarts already allowed this, but we recommended using two separate forms, while customers understandably preferred that all guests register with the same form.

Offer an Invoice Option on a PayPal Form

FormSmarts members can now provide a PDF/email invoice option on their payment forms. When this feature is enabled, guests can choose on the confirmation page of the form to either pay online via PayPal or get an invoice (screenshot above) to pay later by check, cash or with a payment app. Please try this demo and share your feedback in the comments section.

If you would like to allow guests to pay later/offline, toggle on Offer invoice option in the Submit Actions screen of the form builder shown below.

Offer invoice options on payment form for cash, cheque and app payments

We don’t recommend turning on this feature unless you specifically need to allow guests to pay later, because you will then have to make sure that each and every form submission has been paid for:

  • To track registrations paid online with PayPal, check that each registration shows payment details (amount paid, PayPal transaction ID) in the Excel report or email notification.
  • To track cash and check payments, we suggest you tag form entries as “paid” when the person pays and document the corresponding payment with a note.

How to Create a Bill

FormSmarts offers a really simple way to create bills that customers can pay online: just create a billing form like the one below, then use a tool on FormSmarts.com each time you want to generate a bill for a specific client and amount.
Online Bill Example

Make a Billing Form

We only need to create the billing form once, we’ll then reuse it each time we need to create an invoice.

Here our example has two main input fields: an email field to uniquely identify the customer and a text box for the amount we want to bill them for. You can view and test the billing form. We’ve also made a slightly more elaborate example that allows a client to add a gratuity with a second amount box.

Note how both the Email and Amount Due fields are fixed: the values preset in the pre-filled URL can’t be changed by the client. We’ll cover how to do this in the next section, for now I need to explain how to set up the Amount Due input field so FormSmarts recognizes it as a fee to be paid by the bill recipient.

Add an Amount Box

  1. Add a Text Box form control (widget)
  2. Name the input field Amount Due ($ USD). The ‘Amount Due’ label can be whatever you prefer, but you must stick to the same format and specify the currency as shown.
  3. Set its Allowed Content value to Positive Number
  4. If you’ve already configured PayPal integration, you’re all set. Otherwise your need to associate your PayPal account with FormSmarts.

Create a Pre-Filled Bill

When you need to create a new bill, sign in to FormSmarts’ API Console to generate a new Pre-Filled URL with a fixed email and amount. Send the URL to the client in an email or text as a bill.

  • Set the Method to POST (Create)
  • Set the API Endpoint to https://formsmarts.com/api/v1/forms/Form_ID/prefilled_url, replacing Form_ID with the ID of your form.
  • Enter the Request Data as illustrated below and described in the documentation, then submit.
The ID of a form is the alphanumeric string in its FormSmarts.com URL. For example, if a form’s URL is https://formsmarts.com/form/2301?mode=h5, its Form ID is 2301.

Generate a Pre-Filled Bill URL

Preset Values & Make Fields Read-Only

We enter the preset value of the email and amount fields under Request Data, and make sure those can’t be modified by the user:

  • Pre-fill the first input field on the form (pf_f1) with the value blackhole@syronex.com
  • Preset the second input field (pf_f2) to 187.59
  • Prevent the user from modifying either fields by making them read-only (pf_ro1=1, pf_ro2=2)
pf_f1=blackhole@syronex.com
pf_f2=187.59
pf_ro1=1
pf_ro2=2

Find out more about how to pre-fill your forms and how to automatically generate pre-filled URLs if you need to create too many bills to do it manually.

Personalize the Payment Confirmation Email

FormSmarts now allows customers1 to change the text part of the confirmation email we send to form users once their payment has been confirmed, as highlighted below.

If you use FormSmarts for online event registration forms, edit the confirmation message to remind attendees of the date and time of the event, provide information about the venue location, and ask them to print a copy of the message or have it ready for inspection on their phone on the date of the event.

A confirmation email (e-ticket) is sent upon payment

To edit the confirmation message, log in to the form builder and click/tap the pen icon corresponding to the form you would like to edit, then visit the Submit Actions tab.

You can emphasize a section of the text with bold or italics and you may include links and bullet points. The text can be formatted using the buttons provided or with the same Wiki-like syntax you can use elsewhere on your forms.

Use the Preview button to visualize the formatted output of the message.

As always, we value your feedback about this feature.

Note: If you have verified your site and uploaded the logo of your organization to FormSmarts, it will appear at the top of the message.

1 The confirmation email can only be customized with a Business Plus account or above.

How to Issue an Invoice or Support Check & Cash Payments

Your can allow form users to get an invoice by specifying prices, fees and quantities directly on a form. When FormSmarts detects an amount of money on a form, we compute the total amount and show it on the confirmation page, the PDF receipt, and in the confirmation email.

FormSmarts helps you generate invoices and manage check and cash payments by showing the total amount due on the printable Summary Page of a form and in the confirmation email and PDF receipt that users can get on that page.

  • Use this to generate an invoice when someone submits an order form
  • If you’re using our popular payment form feature to collect online payments on your membership and registration forms, chances are that some of your customers will want to pay by check, cash on site or by any other offline payment methods. Use this feature to offer an offline payment option for your online payment forms.

When a form is set up to show a Summary Page when submitted, users may:

  • Request a confirmation email
  • Download a PDF receipt
  • Print a copy of the information submitted with the form

Form's summary page, confirmation email and PDF receipt showing the total amount due

Fees and priced items must be formatted with the FormSmarts payment integration syntax.

As illustrated above, the printout, PDF receipt and confirmation message all include a QR code to help you process payments more reliably and effectively.

Check Payments

  1. Ask users to enclose a printout of the Summary Page with their check
  2. Scan the QR code with any phone or tablet to access the corresponding form entry on FormSmarts
  3. Update the form entry’s payment status with a tag and add a note to record the check number

Cash Payments on Site

The Summary Page can also help you manage cash payments by allowing guests to show their confirmation email or PDF receipt (a.k.a. e-ticket) on their phone (or their printed receipt), that staff can scan to update the registration on FormSmarts. Since the amount due also appears in form response notification emails and PDFs, check-in staff can also reconcile e-tickets with the list of notification emails or registration PDFs even if there is no network connectivity.

How to Make an Offline Payment Form

  1. Create an online payment form with fees formatted as documented
  2. When you’re satisfied with the result, make a copy of the form with the Duplicate Form button ( icon) in the Forms Tab of the form builder
  3. Rename the form and set On Submission to “Show summary with print, email & PDF options” in the Submit Actions tab of the Form Details screen.

The Summary Page supports the same payment-related features as payment forms (except those for recurring payments), including discounts and discount codes.

Can I Accept Online & Offline Payments on the Same Form?

One of the benefits of FormSmarts payment integration is that we won’t notify you until the person has paid so you don’t have to check this yourself each time. If you have a form allowing both online and offline payments, you won’t know which customers have paid online, so you’ll have to review each and every form response.

For this reason, we recommend that you create a copy of the form specifically for check payments and use the Summary Page setup described in the previous section, especially if there are several charges and fees on the form. You’ll then only have to track payments for entries pertaining to that form. You can make a copy of a form in a click with the Duplicate Form button in the upper right-hand corner of the form builder.

Offering a Check Payment Option on an Online Payment Form

If you are making a simple payment form that has a single payment option, you can alternatively include a check payment option on the form using radio buttons or a dropdown list with two options:

Registration Fee ($30 USD)
Registration Fee (pay by check)

If the user doesn’t select the online payment option, FormSmarts will skip the payment step and send you the form entry immediately.

Note that people paying by check won’t receive any confirmation email.

How to Make a Membership Form

Did you know you can offer paid memberships through a simple online form?

If you thought offering online memberships was challenging because it involved a recurring payment each year (or month), you’d be wrong. Making a membership or subscription form with FormSmarts is (almost) as easy as making a one-time payment form.

Creating a Recurring Membership Form with FormSmarts

Recurring membership form

What Is a Recurring Membership?

Before discussing how to make a membership form, let’s first define what a membership is: A member of an organization or membership site may take part in the activities or otherwise claim the benefits exclusively offered by the organization or site to its members during the period of time covered by the membership (one year or month or any other period of time) by paying a membership fee. To remain an active member after the initial period of time, a member needs to pay again. Because most members want renew their membership, membership fees tend to be recurring payments.

When someone signs up for a recurring payment, also called subscription, they agree to be charged a fee at the time they subscribe and again after each period of time specified — until they cancel their membership.

How Can I Make a Subscription or Recurring Membership Form?

The short answer is: simply by writing “Recurring Membership ($100 USD/year)” on a form. FormSmarts will understand that the person filling out the form should be charged US$100 each year for a membership called “Recurring Membership”.

Like with other types of payment forms, you may add a recurring fee to a form in a radio button option, check box, drop-down list option or text block.

FormSmarts supports the following recurring periods and (optional) number of installments:

Recurring Period

  • Recurring Monthly Subscription ($15 USD/month)
  • Recurring 6-Month Membership ($60 USD/6 months)
  • Recurring Yearly Membership ($100 USD/year)
  • options: day(s), week(s), month(s), year(s)

Recurring Times/Number of Installments

  • Quarterly Subscription (4 x $20 USD/3 months)
  • Optional, if Recurring Times is not specified, the recurring payment runs until it is canceled
  • Think of Recurring Times (4 in this case) as a number of installments

Multiple Recurring Fees

You may allow users to select more than one recurring fee on a form like on the membership form shown on the screenshot above (feel free to try the demo), but all fees must then have the same Recurring Period and Recurring Times.

When someone selects multiple fees, FormSmarts will charge them each time for the total amount.

If a form has multiple recurring fees, all of them must have the same Recurring Period and Recurring Times.

Offering a Trial Period

Many membership sites offer new members a trial period allowing them to access the site at a low or no cost before having to pay the full membership fee. A fee with terms (i.e. Recurring Period and Recurring Times) different from the first recurring fee listed on a form is interpreted by FormSmarts as a trial period. Our membership form demo has a trial period.

Integration with Other FormSmarts Features

A Form Entry with Associated Payments

  • If cloud storage is enabled, the details of a membership and all associated payments are listed on FormSmarts on the page corresponding to the initial form entry. A link is provided in every email notification.
  • FormSmarts sends a confirmation email to the subscriber after each successful payment
  • FormSmarts notifies the account owner when a recurring payment is received

How to Create a Recurring Donation Form

Recurring donation form

FormSmarts has long supported one-time donations as part of a dedicated donation form, together with other fees on a registration form, or even on a form using our SuperCart shopping cart.

We are pleased to announce that FormSmarts now also supports recurring donations. A recurring donation allows a contributor to sign up for a donation plan to give the same amount at regular intervals, typically every month or year.

Creating a Recurring Donation Form

  • Add a text box with the field name formatted as My Donation ($ USD/month)
  • Set the field’s Allowed Content (aka. data type) to Number
  • In the Form Details screen of the form builder, set the On Submission option to Integrate with PayPal using advanced integration.

FormSmarts supports the following variations:

Recurring Period

  • Cause Description ($ USD/month)
  • Cause Description ($ USD/2 weeks)
  • options: day(s), week(s), month(s), year(s)

Recurring Times

  • Cause Description (12 x $ USD/month)
  • Think of Recurring Times (12 in this case) as a number of installments
  • If Recurring Times is not specified, the recurring donation runs until it is canceled

Contribution to Multiple Causes

As illustrated on the screenshot above and in this demo, you may add multiple donation boxes to a form to give contributors the opportunity to choose the causes they wish to donate to and allow them to contribute to several causes in a single donation. In the example above, the donor is signing up to give a total of $300 each month; with $200 to support Project A and $100 going towards Projects B.

When several donation boxes are added to a form, all of them must have the same Recurring Period and Recurring Times.

Introducing the New SuperCart Shopping Cart

We’ve completely redesigned the user interface of our SuperCart shopping cart to provide a more refined and intuitive user experience.

SuperCart: form with a minimized view of the shopping cart
Minimized view of the shopping cart

What Is SuperCart?

SuperCart is FormSmarts’ shopping cart.

SuperCart allows a user to submit multiple payment forms — each with one or more priced items on it — and pay for all of them at the end.

A typical use case for SuperCart is to allow a customer to register an open-ended number of guests for an event:

  1. The customer first enters the information of the first participant and chooses the relevant registration options.
  2. Once the customer has submitted the form, all fees and priced options are listed in the shopping cart. In the example below, the registration options for the first guest include two fees: Standard Registration and Lunch & Dinner.
  3. The customer is presented with two choices on the confirmation page: Continue Shopping or Proceed to Payment
  4. He can submit the form again as many time as needed to register more participants
  5. Once done, he can pay for all registrations
SuperCart: form with an expanded view of the shopping cart
Expanded view of the shopping cart

Please try our SuperCart demo and give us feedback.

How to Create a SuperCart Form

Building a SuperCart form is easy:

  1. Create a form with fees formatted like on any FormSmarts payment form.
  2. Set the Return URL of the form to the FormSmarts.com URL given by the form builder. If you prefer to embed the form onto your site (which we don’t recommend with SuperCart), use instead the URL of the page where the form is embedded.
  3. In the Form Details screen of the form builder, set the On Submission option to Integrate with PayPal using SuperCart.

If you haven’t already done so, remember to set up your PayPal account for payment integration.

Advanced Use Cases

Multiple Forms

Most users set up SuperCart to allow their customers to submit one specific form (e.g. registration form for event A) multiple times to register multiple participants, as presented in the scenario above.

SuperCart however allows different forms within the same cart. This would allow, for example, members of an organization to:

  • Buy or renew their membership
  • then register for a first event
  • then register for a second event
  • then pay for the total amount.

And of course, what works for one member works for several…

Donations

SuperCart also supports donations.

Discounts

Flat discounts and discount codes are supported, but percentage discounts are not.

Notes

The new shopping cart is only available with the latest generation of FormSmarts forms. If you’re still using an older version, please update your site now.

Give Feedback

Please share your thoughts and feedback about the shopping cart. Post a comment or let us know on Twitter @FormSmarts or Facebook.

PayPal Integration: Improved Donations & Discounts

We started the new year with a number of updates to FormSmarts’ Advanced PayPal Integration.

Mix Donations & Regular Payments

FormSmarts now allows you to accept both payments for a fixed amount (e.g. membership renewal, registration fee) and donations (which amount is chosen by the contributor) on the same form. This feature is typically aimed at non-profits that would like to collect contributions on their membership form or when taking online registrations for an event. Feel free to try this demo.

Add a Promotion Code and Discount to PayPal

More Flexible Discount Codes

A discount code can now cover the whole amount of the transaction. This would come useful on an event registration form: some attendees to whom you have given an offer code will be able to register for free, while the bulk of delegates will have to pay.

SuperCart Update

In line with this change, we’ve also updated SuperCart to allow free registrations (or any other type of transactions) as part of a SuperCart session. So non-paying delegates can be registered at the same time as paying delegates, within a single SuperCart session.

Offering Discounts with PayPal Integration & Discount Codes

FormSmarts allows you to offer three types of discounts to your customers on your PayPal forms: discounts for a fixed amount, percentage discounts and discount codes.

Fixed Amount Discount

  • Syntax: My Discount (-$5 USD)
  • Example form with a fixed amount discount
  • You may offer more than one discount, but not more than there are paid items selected.

Percentage Discount

  • Syntax: Discount Percentage (-25%)
  • Example form featuring a discount rate
  • You may only add one discount rate to a form
  • Percentage discounts are not supported on SuperCart forms
  • If you’re offering a fixed discount on the same form, both may not be selected at the same time

Discount Codes

Last but not least, FormSmarts supports discount codes. With discount codes, the buyer only get the discount if they enter a valid coupon code on the form.

Buyer enters the discount code to get the discount on PayPal checkout page

  • A discount code offers either a percentage discount or fixed amount discount
  • Try this example with the discount code FSCP-DEMO1
  • You may set up a discount code with a validity period by providing a start and end date (not supported with Starter accounts)

Early Bird Discounts

To offer an early bird discount on a registration form, create a discount code with a start and end date. The discount will only be applied if the form is submitted between those dates.

How to Offer Discount Codes on a Form

To create a discount code and associate it with a form:

  • Add a text box to the form selecting the data type Letters + Numbers
  • Create the discount code on FormSmarts with the API Console as documented and shown in this video.
  • Promo codes must start with FSCP- and may only contain alphanumeric characters and dash.

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About the Form Builder Blog

The Online Form Builder Blog is published by FormSmarts, a web form service providing all you need to create a form and publish it online in minutes. FormSmarts makes it easy to build a form and embed it on your site. You can then get form submissions by email or store them on FormSmarts and download an Excel report. Learn more about the many other benefits of FormSmarts.