Customer payments – Growing Good

📚

Our platform enables you to easily take payments from your customers. We have integrated with Stripe, a tech-first global leader in payment solutions. This enables us to overcome your customer's hesitation around direct debit sign-ups. Whether you are just starting or you’re an established box scheme, Stripe makes it easy to onboard your customers and guarantee payments to you for your orders. This guide will also take you through how payments work, managing credit and refunds.

📑

Summary of managing customer payments

Setup Payment Connection:

Link your account with Stripe via the payment settings page.

Provide company and bank details.

Customer Payment Setup:

Customers add card details during account creation through a secure pop-up.

3D secure authentication ensures transaction security.

Identifying Payment Issues:

Use the customer report to filter customers without payment methods.

Address failed payments shown on the sales page, identified by a yellow ‘payment processing’ indicator.

Payment Timing:

Customers are charged when orders are processed, usually around 11 p.m. on the process day.

Accepting Alternative Payments:

Manually create and manage customer credit accounts.

Adjust credit amounts via the customer record.

Refunds:

Refunds can be processed directly to the customer's card or added as credit, depending on their account setup.

Receiving Payments:

Check the payouts page for Stripe payout schedules, typically within 5 working days, excluding delays like bank holidays.

Getting started with Stripe

When you start the initial set up process with Growing Good, one of the first things we will ask you to do is set up your payment connection with Stripe. This means that the customer will be able to add their card details to make payments for your service and you can also receive payments from Stripe. This can be done through your payment settings page. Click on ‘payment gateway’ and then proceed to onboard with Stripe. You will be asked to provide company details and bank account details so do have these to hand before starting the process.

How do customers set up payment?

When a new customers starts the online shopping process with you, once of the things they need to do to create an account and place orders is providing their card details. This is done through a secure pop up. Once the customer has set up their initial details, their customer basket will prompt them to set up a payment card to enable their order to be processed. Once the card details are provided and the ‘Add Payment Method’ button is clicked a 3D secure authentication pop up will appear from the customers card issuing bank. This is an extra layer of security required for online transactions. You can find out more about what 3D secure is here.

💡

Common issues with payment set up - the most common issue when a customer sets up payment is the 3D secure authentication not initiating on the site. This is most commonly down to a browser related issue. Ad/pop up blockers can often prevent the pop up from appearing which will result in a failed set up. Make sure to these are disabled on the site or try the set up in Incognito browser.

Identifying customers who have not set up payment

You can easily find customers who may have partially set up an account or encountered issues setting up their payment in your customer report. You can apply the filter ‘Payment method’ is ‘False’.

Failed payments

When a customers payment is processed there is a possibility that the payment may be declined. This could be for various reasons such as insufficient funds in the customers account. These can be easily identified in your sales page for the week by looking for the yellow ‘payment processing’ identifier as shown below (left). Click on view to go through to the order record to see more information. In the bottom (right), the payment history is shown and will provide information on why the payment has not gone through. You can retry the payment by hitting ‘settle balance’ on the order. You can find a guide on Stripe payment decline codes here.

💡

Failed payments and order processing - if a failed payment occurs and the customer has a valid payment method set up, the order will still be processed and listed in your sales page. It is then up to you whether the order is cancelled or you retry the payment.

When are payments taken from the customer?

Customers are charged when the order is processed which is set in your admin settings. This can be different for the different delivery rounds that have been set up. When setting up your delivery rounds in your GG admin, process day is the point at which your customers are charged. All orders are processed and charged at or around 11 p.m. (order deadline) on the process day.

Accepting other forms of payment

There may be times when you need to accept a different form of payment from your customers such as cash or cheque. Our system allows you to manually create credit and add credit payments to a customer account.

Customer credit accounts

To enable flexibility with customers who may not bank online, you have the ability to create credit accounts for particular customers. To do so go to the customer record and click on the ‘credit’ tab.

To open the credit account click on ‘create credit’. This will enable orders to process without a valid card payment even if no credit amount is added.

To add a credit amount click on ‘update credit’ then enter the required details. When the customers next order is processed or a balance is settled, the payment will be taken from the credit amount first. If the credit amount is not enough to cover the whole order than the rest will be charged to a card (if set up). If there is not enough credit to cover the order value than it will appear as a failed payment and be flagged in the sales page for the week.

Decreasing credit

You can decrease the credit amount on a customers account without having to charge for an order by entering a negative value when updating the credit amount. This acts the same as a charge against the customer without having to process an order with products attached to it.

How do I refund a customer?

You can cancel items on a customers order and refund any balance owed to the customer directly through the GG platform. You can either:

Refund the balance back to their card

Refund the balance to credit to come off their next order

To cancel products on an order and apply a refund:

Locate the order record for the customer in the sales page or directly through the customer record. Click ‘view’ on the order that you need to apply a refund to.

Cancel the required items to recalculate the customer's balance. You can then apply the refund. You will be given a choice to either refund to card or refund to credit. You can select which refund type you want to apply by clicking on the ‘down’ arrow. If the customer has credit enabled on their account it will show both options. But if no credit account is enabled for the customer, this will be greyed out when selecting from the options. If you want to refund as credit but no credit account is created. Navigate to the customers profile and create a credit account for them in the credit tab.

Once you are happy with the selection, hit the ‘refund to card’ or ‘refund to credit’ button to process the refund.

💡

Refunding an item that’s part of a veg box - It’s currently not possible to partially refund an item on a customers order. For example if a customer wants a refund for an item that’s within a veg box product, you will need to manually apply a credit to the customers account which will then be taken off their next order.

When do I get paid for my orders?

You can check your Stripe payout schedule from the payouts page located in your finances part of the admin. Stripe processing times are normally around 5 working days. However, this is dependent on when the charges are initiated. For example if a payment is being processed over a bank holiday this will cause a delay to the payment entering your account.

Payments will be made in different chunks depending on your order processing setup. For example, If all your orders are being processed at the same time then you will get payments in one lump. If your order processing is done over multiple days, then any delivery rounds with the same process day will be paid out at the same time.