Getting paid
Estimates & Invoicing
Building an estimate
Pick a customer, add line items (description, quantity, unit price), and set a discount amount and tax rate. You can start from a saved estimate template — a reusable named set of line items managed under the Estimate Templates page — instead of building one from scratch each time.
Worth knowing
Customer approval and e-signature
Once an estimate is no longer a draft, it has its own public approval link — no customer login required. On that page, the customer can sign and approve (typed name plus an on-screen signature) or decline. Approving stores the signature and timestamp and marks the estimate approved.
Converting an estimate to a job
Once an estimate is approved, a "Convert to job" action creates a new job for the same customer with the estimate's line items carried over, at your workflow's first stage, and links the estimate to the new job. This can only be done once per estimate.
Invoicing
Invoices use the same line-item editor as estimates. The status lifecycle is Draft → Sent (which emails the customer) → Paid/Partial (via a payment) or Void.
What this does not do
Getting paid online
Settings → Payments is where you choose how customers pay you. There are three answers for Stripe, and you can change between them whenever you like — and, beside them, the other providers a business might already have. Taking Payments & Payouts covers all of them, including Mollie, Viva.com, direct debit through GoCardless, and the scan-to-pay code on euro invoices.
Through On Site & Ready. The quickest route: you don't need a Stripe account of your own. We open one in your name, Stripe asks you to verify your business and add a bank account, and that takes a few minutes — longer if Stripe wants to see a document. The account is yours. Money from your customers settles into it and is held by Stripe, never by us.
We take no cut. Not a commission, not a percentage, not a fee per invoice. Stripe's own processing fee is all you pay, and it is the same fee you would pay holding the account yourself.
Your own Stripe account. If you already have one, paste your secret and publishable keys — they're validated live before saving. Nothing about how you work today changes.
No card payments. A real choice, not a gap. Your invoices show your payment terms and bank details instead of a pay button, which is what you want if you are paid by transfer and cash.
Under either of the first two, a customer viewing their invoice on the public portal sees a "Pay now" button that opens Stripe Checkout in your business's name — that is what appears on their card statement. Payment is verified and applied to the invoice automatically when they return.
Worth knowing
Your money, and when it reaches your bank
If you take payments through us, Settings → Payments also shows what you are holding. Ready to pay out is money that has cleared. Still clearing is money taken in the last few days — card payments are not instant, and this is normal rather than a sign anything is wrong.
Payouts to your bank run either on Stripe's own schedule or only when you press the button, whichever you pick. Recent payouts are listed with what happened to each, and a payout that fails shows the bank's own reason — usually a detail on the account that needs correcting.
Worth knowing
Manual payments and credit notes
You can also record a manual payment against an invoice's balance (for cash, check, bank transfer, or anything paid outside Stripe), or issue a credit note with an amount and reason, which reduces the balance and is recorded for your records.
Keeping your accounts in step
If you have connected Xero or QuickBooks, each invoice shows whether it reached your accounting package and how many of its payments went with it — plus a Sync now button if something has not made it. Press it as often as you like; nothing is sent twice.
Refunds and credit notes are sent as credit notes at the other end, so a refunded invoice does not sit in your books reading as fully paid. Invoices and payments carry the date they actually happened, not the date they synced, so your monthly figures stay right even when you bring across a year of history at once.
Worth knowing
Exporting invoices
Export invoices as CSV in a general format, or in layouts pre-formatted for bulk import into Xero or QuickBooks, from the invoice list's export option.
Both invoices and estimates have a print view — a clean, itemised page without the app around it, which your browser will print or save as a PDF. It opens from the Print button on the record itself.