Card payments guide
Online payments
Paid straight to your Stripe account
Let your customers pay an invoice by card, from a link in the invoice email. The money goes straight to your own Stripe account — Beagle never holds it and takes no cut of it. When the payment clears, the invoice is marked paid for you.
This is separate from Billing, which is your own Beagle subscription. Online payments is money coming in from your customers; Billing is what you pay us.
Switching it on
Go to Settings → Online payments. This page is admin-only. Choose Connect Stripe and Stripe will ask for your business details and where to pay the money out. Most of it happens without leaving Beagle. The badge at the top tells you where you are: Not connected, Setup incomplete when Stripe still wants something, or Accepting payments once you are live.
How the link reaches your customer
A pay link is created when you email an invoice — not when you create it, and not when you open it. The email carries a Pay this invoice online button, and every reminder you send carries the same link. Opening an invoice never brings a live payment link into existence.
Reading the link off an invoice
The invoice page has an Online payment panel showing the same link, so you can read it out on a phone call. If the invoice has not been emailed yet the panel says so. Revoke link kills it immediately — including the copy already sitting in your customer's inbox.
What your customer sees
No login and no account. The page shows the invoice number, what is owed, and who it is from — nothing else about you or them. The button carries the live balance — Pay £1,240.00 by card — and hands them to Stripe's own card page; paying returns them to a receipt. Pressing it over and over is throttled to five attempts a minute, which answers “Too many attempts. Please wait a moment and try again.” rather than opening another checkout. That is the throttle doing its job, not a fault.
Which invoices can be paid
Invoices that are Sent, Partially paid or Overdue and still have something outstanding. A draft has not been issued yet; anything paid, cancelled, void or written off has nothing left to collect.
The amount is worked out live
Your customer is charged the balance outstanding at the moment they press Pay, not the amount the invoice was for. A part payment you keyed in, or a credit note you raised, is taken into account — so a link left open overnight cannot charge yesterday's figure.
After they pay
Stripe tells Beagle, and the payment is recorded against the invoice automatically. A pay link always charges the whole outstanding balance, so an online payment always leaves the invoice Paid — Partially paid is only ever reached by keying a part payment in here yourself. Whoever the invoice is assigned to gets a notification (whoever created it, if it is unassigned), and the pay link is revoked the moment the money lands, so it cannot be used twice.
Part payments and overpayments
Keying a part payment in does not switch the link off — deliberately, because something is still owed and the link is how it gets paid. The next press simply charges the smaller balance. If the two cross — you record the cheque while your customer is already on Stripe's card page — the card payment is capped at what was still owed and anything over the top is issued to the customer as an account credit credit note, ready to be drawn down against their next invoice. Nothing is lost, and nothing is refunded for you.
How long a link lasts
90 days from the day it is created — comfortably longer than normal payment terms. If an invoice is still unpaid by then, the next reminder you send carries a fresh link automatically, so an old invoice never goes dark. A link that has expired, been revoked or been paid shows a plain “link unavailable” page.
What it does not do yet
- Cards only. No bank transfer, Direct Debit or BACS. Those settle days later, which would let an invoice read as paid for money that can still fail.
- Charges are taken in pounds sterling. If you invoice in another currency, take payment your usual way and record it on the invoice by hand.
- No refunds from Beagle. Refund in your Stripe dashboard, then raise a credit note here so your books agree.
- Payouts are Stripe's, not ours. When the money reaches your bank, and what Stripe charges you to process it, are between you and Stripe.
If the button never appears
A missing Pay online link almost always means one of three things: the invoice has not been emailed yet, the invoice has nothing outstanding, or Stripe is not finished with you — check Settings → Online payments for a Setup incomplete badge. If the badge reads Unavailable, card payments are not switched on for this server at all; contact support.