Integrated payments primer

A brief primer on how to setup payments, how they work, and what to expect

Setting up your Stripe account

The first step to setting up integrated payments with Fortify is to activate your own Stripe account. Fortify partners with Stripe for secure payment processing. Fortify creates customers, saves payment methods, and creates payments on your behalf directly in your Stripe account.

Implementing payments

Your Fortify representative will connect your Stripe account to your Fortify Vendor Program using your Account ID. You can find you account ID from your account profile in Stripe. It looks like this: acct_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Vendors leveraging the Fortify "monetize" offering where you retroactively monetize payment plans must set their payment method to ACH Only. If you are not leveraging this program Fortify will accept all payment methods, from CC to Apple Pay and ACH.

Setting a schedule template

Your vendor program also determines the integrated payment schedule template. These templates create the default purchase options each time a new opportunity is created for your vendor account.

For example, your net terms template can include a down payment followed by any number of installment payments, where installment payments are set to transact X number of days from the installment payment start date.

A popular template for our vendors is: 1 Down Payment followed by 3 Equal Installment Payments, 30, 60, and 90 days after installment payment date.

How transactions get created

As a Vendor Admin user you can manage transactions from the Transactions & Review tab. Transactions are the source of record for all payments. When a transaction is scheduled for a date and the customer has authorized payment, the specified transaction amount will be pulled.

Transactions are created when the customer authorizes payment at checkout, in accordance to the Installment Payment Start Date (found in the transactions and review tab).

Down payments are schedule to pull the day of the payment authorization.

For Example

A customer selects the payment option: 1 Down Payment followed by 3 Equal Installment Payments, 30, 60, and 90 days, and the installment payment start date is Feb 13, 2023, the subsequent transactions will be scheduled as follows:

Working with Transactions

Once the customer authorizes payment and transactions are created, Vendor Admins can adjust scheduled dates by selected any transaction and adjusting the date.

Note: We do not support changing payment schedules after payment is authorized; however, we do support changing transactions and their details. For special circumstances or help managing transactions, contact your Fortify representative.

Notifications

The following notifications are sent in accordance to events in the checkout flow:

When payment is authorized

A notification is sent to Vendor Admins indicating payment has been authorized and the schedule of transactions that were created. At this time it is the responsibility of Vendor Admins to then communicate this schedule to the customer as they choose.

When a scheduled payment is 2 days away

An email reminder is sent to the Customer indicating the upcoming payment amount. This is to give the customer time to adjust accounts in the event of large payments.

When a payment fails

An email notification is sent to the Customer indicating the payment has failed and they need to update their payment method. Fortify will automatically retry this payment method 5 more times. See the schedule of failed payment emails to the customer here.

An email notification is sent to the Vendor Admin indicating the failed payment and Fortify's automated action to retry.

There is no action needed by the vendor unless the failed payment reason is do_not_honor by the customers bank. In this case, after the customer has their bank approve the transaction, the vendor admin must go to the Transaction & Review tab to re-validate the customer's payment method:

Reporting

You can always see pending, scheduled, and failed transactions from an opportunity's Transactions & Review tab.

You can also see the status of all transactions from the Transactions index page.

Using Opportunity Views

You can create custom views of opportunities on your index table and filter by "Requirements" and their status to see opportunities with authorized or pending transactions.

Exporting Opportunities for In-Depth Reporting

From any view, you can export all transactions (in view) by selecting export in the top right page action menu. This will export all opportunities in view and their subsequent associated fields. You will receive the opportunity export CSV to your email shortly.

If you need help building advanced reporting in Excel or your BI tool, contact your Fortify representative for assistance.

Exporting Transactions for In-Depth Reporting

You can export all transactions and their status' from the transactions index table. This can be especially useful for cashflow forecasting, comparing complete transactions to those which are scheduled.

To export transactions simply select the Export button from the transactions index table. You will receive the transaction export CSV to your email shortly.