Posts Tagged ‘paypal form’

How to Add Text to Form Responses

As online forms evolve to become digital contracts and documents e-signed online, we've updated Text Blocks to give customers more control over what to display in form responses, confirmation emails, and PDF receipts.

Adding Text & Links to a Form

You can insert chunks of text on a form with two form controls: Text Blocks and Agreements. Text Blocks let you to give directions and specify contractual statements on the form itself, while agreements provide a dedicated form control to allow users to view larger contracts in a scrollable section of the form and keep a copy of it.

Choosing the Text Shown in Form Responses

When we introduced Text Blocks in the early days of FormSmarts, the main purpose was to allow customers to provide instructions and comments on their forms. Form respondents only needed directions while they were filling out a form, so we didn't provide a way to show text blocks in form responses sent to form recipients and available online or in confirmation emails and PDF receipts.

Online Form Builder with a Text Block

Today, many customers use forms as fillable digital contracts with online signatures, so we've updated Text Blocks to allow members to pick which sections of text they want to display and which ones are just directions for the user that don't need to appear in form submissions.

When you create or edit a text block, toggle on Show in form responses (see screenshot above) to display text blocks in the copy of the submitted data given to both parties:

Form Respondents

Form Recipients

This option is not available with all types of accounts.

Setting a Pricing Rule with a Text Block

Online Form with Quantity Box

One use of text blocks is to specify a pricing rule on PayPal forms. Text blocks provide an easy way to set a single registration fee on a form and to allow users to enter an item quantity with a Quantity Box.

Unlike other text blocks, those specifying a fee or amount of money are always displayed, for all types of accounts that support payment integration, even if Show in form responses is toggled off.

Posted on Jul 21st, 2021 in form builder.
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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.

Posted on Feb 1st, 2013 in payment form.
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How to Have Users Pay Once for Multiple Registrations or Orders

A little known feature of FormSmarts’ Advanced PayPal Integration is SuperCart. This feature allows a user to submit multiple online forms that include a payment and pay once for the total amount at the end, thereby providing the buyer with a better ‘shopping’ experience and reducing the seller’s PayPal fees. Let’s review two typical uses of SuperCart.

Note: This article discusses an early version of SuperCart. Although it content has been updated and is still relevant, please also read our introduction to the SuperCart Shopping Cart.

Online Registration Form Allowing Several Registrants

Use Case 1: Event Registration Form

The first typical use for SuperCart is to create an online form to register attendees for an event. For illustration purposes, I’ve made a registration form for a conference. We want each attendee to be able to choose a different registration package, pick the seminars they would like to attend and optionally add an accommodation package. With SuperCart, a user can register multiple delegates by submitting the registration form for each one, then pay for all of them at once. In the illustration above, we submit the form once to register Pat selecting the standard registration option, then again for Jim, opting this time for a premium registration and adding accommodation. We then proceed to PayPal to pay for both registrations. This short video shows how this works in practice.

Use Case 2: Order Form

Another common use of this feature is to create an order form allowing a buyer to purchase several products or services while being able to customize options for each one. I’ve built an order form demo to allow customers to configure and order goods (greetings cards in this example). Each product can be customized based on the options selected on the order form. With SuperCart, the buyer will be able to order as many products as they like by submitting an order form for each one, then pay for all of them at once.

How to Create a SuperCart Form

While understanding the concepts behind SuperCart may not appear straightforward, building a SuperCart form is easy:

  1. Set the Return URL of the form to the URL of the page the form is embedded into. If you’re using the standalone form, enter the FormSmarts.com URL given by the form builder instead.
  2. In the Form Details screen, 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 Advanced PayPal Integration.

When You Should and Shouldn’t Use SuperCart

Set up your PayPal forms with SuperCart whenever you would like to allow a buyer to pay once for multiple form submissions and providing a single form would affect the form’s usability because each registration/order has too many options or you expect someone will submit more two or three registrations/orders. If it’s unlikely buyers will submit more than one form you should use a regular payment with Advanced PayPal Integration instead.

Posted on Jan 4th, 2013 in payment form.
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PayPal Integration in Two Steps

FormSmarts PayPal integration is as easy to use as our popular PayPal form feature, but it provides several additional benefits, mainly:

  • FormSmarts only notifies you of a new registration (or more generally, payment form submission) after the payment is confirmed and verified (no need for manual verification)
  • Your customer receives an automated email receipt with a copy of the data submitted and a payment confirmation. For registration forms, this can work as an e-ticket.
  • PayPal Integration works seamlessly with other FormSmarts features (export to Excel, PDF reports, API).

What Are the Benefits of PayPal Integration?

FormSmarts’ old PayPal integration was easy to use and set up as it required no change to your PayPal account. A downside to this was that FormSmarts had no way to know if the payment went through or not, and you — the seller — had to manually reconcile payments and the corresponding form responses using the FormSmarts Reference Number. That was usually not an issue for small sales volumes, but could quickly become so as sales increased. We’ve now fully automated payment processing and integrated it with the form processing platform. Here are the benefits:

  • No need to manually reconcile form responses with payment notifications from PayPal
  • The seller is only notified of a registration/order when the payment has gone through
  • The transaction won’t appear in Excel exports until the buyer has paid
  • FormSmarts verifies that the payment details match data submitted on the form (e.g. amounts, quantities)
  • Excel exports combine data submitted through the form and details of the corresponding payments.
  • FormSmarts sends a confirmation email to the buyer with both the order details and a payment confirmation. If you have verified your website and uploaded a logo, your site URL and logo will appear in the email.
  • Payment processing is fully automated and if you’re using online/PDF reporting or export to Excel, your registration forms are on autopilot.
  • You can further automate processing or integrate FormSmarts with your website or another web service using the FormSmarts API.

Setting Up PayPal Integration

This video shows how to set up your form and set up your PayPal account for PayPal Integration.

Add Fees to the Form & Set It Up to Integrate with PayPal

To set up PayPal integration, first create a payment form with prices formatted as shown in the PayPal integration page of the site. Then visit the Forms tab of the form builder and select Integrate with PayPal in the Submit Actions tab of the Form Details screen, as illustrated below.

Select Advanced PayPal Integration in the Form Builder

Add Your FormSmarts Notification URL to PayPal

It’s now time to log in to your PayPal account to add your Notification URL. PayPal will use this URL to communicate with FormSmarts. You’ll find your notification URL in the Security Settings section of your FormSmarts account. The URL contains your private security key, so don’t share it with anyone.

Use this link to access the Instant Payment Notification (IPN) page of your PayPal account, then tap Edit Settings and paste your Notification URL in the box as shown on the screenshot below. Make sure Receive IPN messages is enabled before saving.

Turn On PayPal IPN Notification

You can alternatively navigate to the IPN Settings screen from the homepage of your PayPal account.

Payment integration will not work until you have added your FormSmarts Notification URL to your PayPal account.

Did You Link Multiple Emails to PayPal?

If you’ve associated more than one email address to your PayPal account, the email you’ve selected as your Primary PayPal email must be the same as your FormSmarts login email.

You can either change your FormSmarts login or update your Primary PayPal email so both email addresses are the same.

FormSmarts will reject payments associated with an email address other than your FormSmarts login email for security reasons.

If PayPal shows an error on the checkout page when testing your first form, you may need to update your PayPal account settings.

Posted on Apr 28th, 2011 in payment form.
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How to Build a PayPal Subscription Form

Many websites allow visitors to access online content and services for a monthly subscription fee. Creating a subscription form is somewhat different from creating a regular payment form, because it involves setting up a recurring payment, so that the buyer is automatically billed a fixed amount of money at a fixed interval until the subscription is canceled. The online form builder’s payment integration feature now supports PayPal Subscriptions.

PayPal Subscription Form

Creating a Subscription Form

Creating a subscription form is quick and easy:

  1. If you haven’t got a FormSmarts account yet, sign up for a FormSmarts Business account, then create a form with the form generator
  2. In the Form Details screen of the form generator, set the On Submission option to Integrate with PayPal
  3. Add radio buttons, a drop-down list or a checkbox, and enter the description, price and duration of subscription options formatted as My Subscription ($19.99 USD/month), as shown on the screenshot above and in this demo.

Duration of a Subscription

The time before another payment is due can be specified in days, weeks, months, or years. The form builder understands the following formatting variations:

  • Monthly Subscription ($9.99 USD/Month)
  • 30-Day Subscription ($9.99 USD/30 days)

Trial Subscription

Like in the example presented in the first section, you may specify a trial period for the subscription. This is typically used to give a free trial subscription to the buyer before he is charged for the first billing cycle. The buyer will not have to pay anything if he cancels the subscription before the end of the trial period.

  • The trial period doesn’t need to be free
  • You may specify up to two trial periods
  • Any trial periods must be placed on the form after the main subscription specification.

Payment in Installments

A payment in installments is a recurring payment where the number of payments is fixed.

FormSmarts supports installments with the following syntax:

  • Payment in 12 Installments (12x$9.99 USD/month)
  • Try this demo

Any Feedback?

As always, your feedback is important to us and is our primary source of inspiration for developing new features. You can also post your questions and comments on Facebook and Twitter (@FormSmarts).

Posted on Jan 17th, 2011 in payment form.
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Detailed Form Confirmation Page (Summary Page)

FormSmarts supports a number of options to complement the default confirmation page that is displayed when someone submits a form.

You can:

Detailed Form Confirmation Page

The detailed confirmation page, also called Summary Page, shows a summary of the data submitted and allows form users to:

  • Have a confirmation email sent to them
  • Download a PDF receipt
  • Print a copy of the form data.

Feel free to try this demo.

The form generator allows users to get a PDF or receive an confirmation email

Use the summary page whenever you want users to be able to keep a copy of the information they’ve submitted or a proof of their submission.

PDF receipts may not display correctly in non Western-European languages (Russian, Chinese,…) unless the language is set explicitly with the lang parameter.

Setup Instructions

Set up form confirmation email

Visit the Forms Tab of the form builder and click the icon showing a pen to edit the corresponding form. Towards the bottom of the Form Details screen (pictured above), change the On Submission action to ‘Show summary with print, email & PDF options’.

Posted on Oct 12th, 2010 in form builder.
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Web Form Builder Upgrade

This release of FormSmarts introduces over one hundred improvements, leading to our most powerful, reliable and generous offer yet.

Important Reminder

Please add FormSmarts sender email formsmarts-noreply@syronex.com to your contacts, whitelist, or list of allowed senders and instruct any other form recipients to do so too. This should ensure your web forms are (and continue to be) always correctly delivered to your Inbox.

Increased Input Fields Allowance

To allow all users to take advantage of the new Heading and Text Block widgets introduced with this release, we’ve increased the number of fields you can use on a form.

  • FormSmarts Standard users can add up to 15 fields on each form using their referral points.
  • FormSmarts Pro users can add up to 60 fields on each form.

Be a Good Web-Citizen

  • Report bugs. However intense our testing efforts before releasing a new version of the form builder, bugs may remain due to the number of different browsers and versions in use. Please report any suspected bugs on the forum or by email.
  • Show your support. Whether you are a Standard user getting the web form service for free or a FormSmarts Pro customer paying the price of a business lunch for a year of service, please show your support by pressing the “Like” button on our Facebook page and following us on Twitter.

Major Changes

If many of the changes are improvements to FormSmarts server-side software which are not directly visible to you, all affect the quality of the service we provide you.

  • Form data storage and Excel reporting are coming out of Beta, and you can now activate those for each form in the Form Details screen of your account.
  • We’ve improved several aspects of the form creator‘s interface.
  • We now support headings and text blocks on forms; details in another post.

Posted on May 5th, 2010 in form builder.
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Changes in Form Builder Payment Integration

The recent upgrade introduces some changes in FormSmarts Payment Integration (PayPal Form) feature.

  • Chargeable items may now be placed in check boxes. This should prove valuable in situations where you’re building a form with one or several optional, individually priced items.
  • Payment button instead of link. We’ve replaced the payment link on the confirmation page by a more outstanding button.
  • Form ID now shown in PayPal report. Up to now, when you needed to reconcile a payment with the corresponding form submission, you could only rely on the FormSmarts Reference Number. This is the unique ID shown in the subject of emails containing form data and in Form to Excel reports. The same ID appears in the payment details in your Paypal account, and also in the CSV report you can generate. We’ve now added the Form ID (see screenshot) to the information available on PayPal, so you may quickly identify which form each payment is for.

PayPal form payment details

We warmly welcome your feedback.

Posted on May 5th, 2010 in form builder.
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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:

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

This video is a step-by-step tutorial showing how to make a payment form with FormSmarts’ form builder and set up your PayPal account to receive payments.

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.

Registration Form with PayPal

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:

Online Payment Form with Price and Quantity

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

Payment Button on a PayPal Form

  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.
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