User Guide
Online payments
Collect from clients and pay vendors by ACH through your own Stripe account. Opt-in per firm.
Your Stripe account, your money
Payments run through your firm's own Stripe account — funds settle directly to your bank. TimeTrack Pro never holds your money and takes no cut. Turn the feature on under Settings → Modules → Payments; firms that don't enable it see no payment surfaces at all.
What you can do
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Clients pay invoices
Every invoice email gets a Pay Now button. The client pays by bank transfer (ACH) on a Stripe-hosted page; when the bank confirms 1–3 days later, the invoice flips to paid on its own.
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Retainer deposits
Send a payment link for a new retainer deposit or a top-up when a retainer runs low. The deposit lands on the retainer's ledger automatically once it settles.
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Pay vendors + 1099s
Vendors and solo contractors connect their bank through Stripe's own onboarding. Then a Pay button on any approved vendor invoice sends the ACH transfer and records the payment.
Setting it up
- ✓1. Enable the Payments module (Settings → Modules)
- ✓2. Paste your Stripe keys under Settings → Payments — a guided walkthrough shows where to find them
- ✓3. Save — the connection is tested automatically before it goes live
- ✓4. Optional: decide whether clients cover the processing fee (see below)
- ✓5. For vendor payouts: send each vendor or contractor their Stripe onboarding link
- ✓6. Send invoices as usual — the Pay Now button appears on its own
Processing fees — you decide who pays
Stripe charges a small fee per ACH payment (capped at a few dollars). By default your firm absorbs it. Flip on Add processing fee to invoice total to pass it through as a separate line on the client's checkout page, and set a minimum invoice amount so a small invoice never carries a fee that looks out of proportion.
Who can do what
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Super admin
Connects Stripe, sets fee policy, issues refunds, reviews every payment event under Diagnostics.
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Manager
Sends payment links and pays vendor invoices for the clients they're assigned to.
Refunds
Super admins can refund any payment that came in through Stripe from the invoice's payment list. The money goes back to the client's original bank account, the invoice balance is restored, and a refund row is kept on the invoice so the history stays complete.
Works hand-in-hand with bank reconciliation
Plenty of money still moves outside Stripe — payroll, tax payments, wires from enterprise clients' AP portals, contractors who prefer a check. With Bank reconciliation also enabled, every one of those still lands in TimeTrack Pro and gets matched, so your books are complete whether or not Stripe touched the payment.
Tip
Contractors paid through Stripe receive a 1099-K from Stripe in addition to the 1099-NEC your firm issues. Their onboarding email explains this up front, and anyone who'd rather be paid by check simply skips onboarding — you pay them the way you do today.
Note
Bank transfers only (ACH, US dollars). Card payments are intentionally not offered — card fees on a typical professional services invoice run 20–30× higher than ACH.
Troubleshooting
- ✓Diagnostics → Payment Events lists every notification Stripe has sent, with status
- ✓Duplicate notifications are detected and ignored — a payment is never recorded twice
- ✓Every link, payout and refund is written to the audit log
- ✓Disabling the module hides every payment surface without deleting history