Stripe users, how do you handle tracking fees in QB or other accounting software?

[drnick5]

Hey Folks,

I recently made the move to repair shopr and have set up stripe as our payment method. The one issue I have is how it handles payments and Fees. If we take in a $100 payment, instead of $100 being deposited to our account, stripe removes its fee first and only deposits whats left ($97.10 in this example). This makes accounting a nightmare in quickbooks as I'll have to go in to each deposit and record a separate line item of "stripe fees" so its tracked correctly.

I already sent a support request, but I was wondering if its possible to get them to take the fees out after they make the deposit. (I.E. deposit $100, then do a withdrawal for the $2.90 fee). If not, how are you guys tracking this in Quickbooks or other accounting software? My goal here is to make everything as automated as possible.

thanks for an help or suggestions!

 

[skdmaster]

All vendors like this (Square, Stripe, etc.) take their fee off the top first then give you the balance. You should be getting a daily report of the transactions - from that you could just make a customer called credit card fee and do a return against credit cards for the daily fee to be deducted.

 

[TenYardFight]

sprintertech runs a ton of volume thru square so he might have a suggestion. This is another reason I love my traditional merchant account. Fees taken out in a separate transaction once each month...

 

[drpcfix]

Yeah - I agree.. Real merchant accounts will give you the whole amount, then take a monthly withdrawal for the fees. It's much cleaner.

One way to reconcile might be to download a spreadsheet monthly with your fees, and make a single adjustment. It's some bookkeeping work for sure, but there is not a way RepairShopr can help with this.

You have a $100 invoice in RS, for it to be marked as paid you need a $100 payment. If you have a $100 payment, we can't send a $97 payment to QB. It wouldn't be able to cover the $100 invoice we send to QB, they would have an open balance.

If you are doing more than 5k~ a month it's probably time to look at a real merchant account too.

Although, if you can hold out another few weeks.. RepairShopr might have a cool announcement in this area with a new integration

(what would be simpler and cheaper than stripe, and allow swiping in iOS, and integrate?

 

[Mike McCall]

How does Stripe compare to Square? I'm currently using Square.

 

[skdmaster]

Stripe is more of a website/program integration and Square is a replacement for a credit card terminal using your phone/tablet. Stripe is more expensive 2.9% + .30 transaction vs Square is a flat 2.75%. Square has rolled out EMV compliant readers now. In my office we use a merchant account terminal thru my bank for the store and each onsite tech has a Square reader. We use to have the techs call back to the office to manually key the card but was a higher rate so opted to do Square. Easier to do right there with the client and looks more professional.

 

[Mainstay]

This is a nightmare that we finally solved by going to a real merchant account (Moneris).

However, our American Express does this so we:

1. Receive payment to un-deposited funds (for the whole amount)
2. When payment comes in from American Express to our bank we do a deposit for that one item with the "Cash Back Goes To" option selected in QB and a proper bank account (Account A) selected and the Amount is the fee charged "off the top".
3. Then run a journal entry that credits from Account A and debits it to your account for Bank Service Charges

Multiple entries are lumped together for a single payout.

EDIT: we simplified this *somewhat* by making the Journal Entry a memorized transaction that we just adjust the values.

 

[drnick5]

Thanks for the responses. We wanted to move to RS as quickly as possible, so stripe seemed the easiest way to get moved in here. Our current merchant account was set up when we signed up for a system called Payleap, I tried to jump through the hoops to see if we could drop payleap but still keep the current merchant, I received no responses on this. So I went with Stripe.

One question

Yeah - I agree.. Real merchant accounts will give you the whole amount, then take a monthly withdrawal for the fees. It's much cleaner.

One way to reconcile might be to download a spreadsheet monthly with your fees, and make a single adjustment. It's some bookkeeping work for sure, but there is not a way RepairShopr can help with this.

You have a $100 invoice in RS, for it to be marked as paid you need a $100 payment. If you have a $100 payment, we can't send a $97 payment to QB. It wouldn't be able to cover the $100 invoice we send to QB, they would have an open balance.

If you are doing more than 5k~ a month it's probably time to look at a real merchant account too.

Although, if you can hold out another few weeks.. RepairShopr might have a cool announcement in this area with a new integration

(what would be simpler and cheaper than stripe, and allow swiping in iOS, and integrate?

A real merchant account may be the way we end up going eventually. But stripe was very simple to set up (did it in 5 minutes). To get a "Real" merchant account, there are a bunch of hoops to jump through. (we have a merchant account right now ties to our current "payleap" system, I attempted to contact them about tieing into this with authorize.net, but never received a response).

Very interesting about the new integration. One question, if we use stripe now and took in a credit card on file for a client in Repairshopr, if we switch to a new provider (either a merchant account with Authorize.net, or this "New" integration.) Will we need to re-add the cards we have on file?

 

[drpcfix]

Very interesting about the new integration. One question, if we use stripe now and took in a credit card on file for a client in Repairshopr, if we switch to a new provider (either a merchant account with Authorize.net, or this "New" integration.) Will we need to re-add the cards we have on file?

Yeah.. Those stored cards are in your stripe account and they can't be retrieved..

If you contact the people that send you your merchant statement each month and they don't respond, that's pretty bad..

I know it's not super simple to get a new merchant account, the vendor we are talking with will still have an application and request some documents - so that part never goes away.

 

[drnick5]

Yeah.. Those stored cards are in your stripe account and they can't be retrieved..

If you contact the people that send you your merchant statement each month and they don't respond, that's pretty bad..

I know it's not super simple to get a new merchant account, the vendor we are talking with will still have an application and request some documents - so that part never goes away.

Yeah, the system we have now is sort of odd. I heard about them from a mailer we received, with the big feature being that we would have 1 merchant account for ALL transactions (in store, online and mobile). making it much easier to track down payments. they set us up with the merchant account and gateway all at the same time.

The problem with getting a new merchant account is the major hassle of price shopping. With everyone guaranteeing the lowest rates. I've gone through this dog and pony show a few times in the past, and its nothing short of a headache. to make matters worse, everyone seems to be slightly different, making it much like trying to price shop a mattress.

I have no problem filling out documentation and the like, its the process of needing to contact several different people to price shop and make sure i'm getting the best deal.

 

[HCHTech]

When I first started taking credit cards, I used PayAnywhere, and this whole dance was a complete nightmare. I finally gave up and just called whatever my checkbook was off 'Credit Card Fees'. It was a happy day when I signed up for a real merchant account and merchant services through my bank. I still get emails from PayAnywhere - "Come Back, we miss you!". Yeah. Not gonna happen.

 

[drpcfix]

The problem with getting a new merchant account is the major hassle of price shopping. With everyone guaranteeing the lowest rates. I've gone through this dog and pony show a few times in the past, and its nothing short of a headache. to make matters worse, everyone seems to be slightly different, making it much like trying to price shop a mattress.

Yeah, I wrote about some of the stuff I recently learned here: https://www.technibble.com/forums/t...ablet-and-storefront-stand.59617/#post-470705

It's actually like getting a good deal on a home mortgage. They can all beat everyone else by a penny to win your business, you just gotta figure out how to get to a price that you aren't totally wasting money with.

I've seen people paying a net effective rate of 5.27%, my shop was actually paying 4.72% (net effective) at the time we sold it - I didn't know how to shop this stuff at the time either.

Of course US Bank told me it was a great low rate, 1.87% for qualified, blah blah - only 5% of the transactions are qualified, and there are other monthly access fees, etc etc.

At this point if you are somewhere under 3% net effective I think you are doing fine. If you just use square and swipe most of the time, you'll be 2.75% - that's a reasonable target to aim to beat.

Our new deal coming online shortly will be a fixed 2.65% for swipe and keyed entry (much better than square actually), and they'll do even better if show a recent merchant statement that illustrates you getting a better deal somewhere else. (also no contract, monthly fees, minimums, etc etc)

 

[drnick5]

Yeah, I wrote about some of the stuff I recently learned here: https://www.technibble.com/forums/t...ablet-and-storefront-stand.59617/#post-470705

It's actually like getting a good deal on a home mortgage. They can all beat everyone else by a penny to win your business, you just gotta figure out how to get to a price that you aren't totally wasting money with.

I've seen people paying a net effective rate of 5.27%, my shop was actually paying 4.72% (net effective) at the time we sold it - I didn't know how to shop this stuff at the time either.

Of course US Bank told me it was a great low rate, 1.87% for qualified, blah blah - only 5% of the transactions are qualified, and there are other monthly access fees, etc etc.

At this point if you are somewhere under 3% net effective I think you are doing fine. If you just use square and swipe most of the time, you'll be 2.75% - that's a reasonable target to aim to beat.

Our new deal coming online shortly will be a fixed 2.65% for swipe and keyed entry (much better than square actually), and they'll do even better if show a recent merchant statement that illustrates you getting a better deal somewhere else. (also no contract, monthly fees, minimums, etc etc)

Thanks for the reply, I checked out your other post, lots of great information in there! I spent a LOT of time learning about how this works, the 2 basic ways this is sold is either the 3 bucket method (qualified, mid qualified and non qualified) or Interchange plus (which charges the interchange fees, plus a markup). the 3rd, new way is with paypal, square, stripe etc. basically being all cards go under 1 rate.

Depending on what type of cards you typically take in, you could save money going with either of the plans. (ex. if you take a lot of business or government/non-profit cards or Amex and Discover, it may actually be cheaper to go with a flat rate company like square or stripe, as even with interchange plus, you'll probably pay over 3%).

Our current system with "Payleap" is actually pretty reasonable, at about 3% effective over the past year. Obviously anything I can cut off of that would be great.

One question with the new integration, whenever that happens. Will there be any way to figure out which stored cards are stored in stripe? Right now I've been adding clients cards on file when I can to set up recurring. But if we switch to a new processor, we'd have to get these cards added in to repair shopr again so they go into the new processor, but I don't see any easy way for me to determine which clients have cards in stripe so I could figure out who I'd need to contact.