Index
Overview
When members make purchases on your Uplifter site they create an owing balance for the items they buy. For any and all owing balances there will also be payments. The term 'Payments' accounts for all statuses and outcomes of an owing balance, as we will see within this article.
The Payments page is found by navigating to Accounting > Payments. In order to access the Payments page you will need the following permissions: Admin, Manage Payments.
Additional permissions may include: Edit Invoices, View Invoices
Payment Manager
The payment manager page is a centralized hub to review all things payments. Here you can get a great overview of the payments within your system and their current statuses. When you first navigate to Accounting > Payments you will be greeted by a list of your payments.
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This page includes color-coded indicators of payment status. At the top of the page you'll find a handy legend for your reference.
For the payments that have been generated in your system you will see the member's name, which links back to their account. Further, you will see the payment's transaction date, which may be in the past or the future depending on the payment. Additionally, the invoice number, payment status, and payment value will be noted.
Payment Statuses
The term 'payment' within Uplifter can apply to many different statuses of an owing balance. Throughout this article and through the Uplifter system the term payments refers to all of these statuses. To reference a specific series of payments within the system a more specific term is used, like 'paid payments'. The following are the payment statuses within Uplifter:
Pending (unpaid): The pending status represents a payment that has not yet been realized. This is an owing balance from your member and will have a 'be paid on' date set.
Undeposited: The undeposited status represents a payment that has been made, but has not yet been deposited into your organization's bank. This is most common with a cheque payment where the cheque has been received, but not deposited. Some organizations will skip this status for the sake of convenience, but it can be an effective way to indicate the current status of a payment for larger organizations.
Declined: The declined status indicates a payment attempt was made, but the payment failed. This could be for various reasons, but most commonly this is a credit card payment attempt that is declined. A declined payment will have a 'declined on' date.
Paid: The paid status indicates a payment that has been completed. This means your organization has received and deposited (as required) the money. A paid payment will have a 'paid on' date.
Updating Payments
Payments can be updated by both the admin and the end user. As an administrator you will have the ability to update an individual payment but also work with a batch of payments all at once. Members will have the ability to update payments through their account by paying them.
Admin Individual Updates
- Navigate to Accounting > Payments
- Click Edit
on the desired payment
- Click to Edit
- Update the payment as desired
- Click Post
To update an individual payment please navigate to Accounting > Payments. Here, select to Edit the payment listing in question. This will bring you to the invoice edit page. On said page, scroll to the bottom to the Payments section. Click to Edit
the payment listing and update the details as desired. Click Post to save any changes. Note that you may prefer navigating to this location through Accounting > Invoices where you can click to Edit
an invoice listing instead of a payment.
Admin Batch Updates
- Navigate to Accounting > Payments
- Filter the page for your desired series of payments
- Click Batch Update
- Enter your desired changes
- Click Update Payments
Batch updating payments can be completed by first navigating to Accounting > Payments. From here, filter your payments list to the desired series of payments you wish to affect. Please note that you cannot batch update Paid or Declined payments. Once you have your series of payments you can click Batch Update on the toolbar. In the batch window you can update the Status of these payments, then set a Batch Name and, if desired, a Payment Time. Before completing the process you can also deselect any payment listings you do not wish to affect during this batching process. Click Update Payments at the bottom of the pop-up to complete the process.
Member Updates
- Navigate to My Account
- Click Make A Payment
- Check off the items you wish to pay for
- Use the drop down to select a method of payment
- Mark "Use these details for all future payments" if desired
- Click Pay Account Balance
- Enter your card details
- Click Submit
Members can update their owing balances by completing payments. This is primarily done with credit card payments. For this, they will need to log into their account and click My Account (or their name) at the top right of the page. From here they can find any owing balances in the Account Status tab (the default selected tab) by expanding the desired Payment list. Click Make A Payment to begin making a payment.
Check off each payment you wish to pay for immediately then select the payment method you wish to use. Check off "Use these details for all future payments" if desired. Click Pay Account Balance and enter your card details. Click Submit to finish.
Postponing Pending Payments
Postponing payments in Uplifter is fast and easy. For this, you need only utilize the Admin Batch Update method above. During this process you will target the desired payment listings by filtering the Payments page. From there you can click Batch Update, set the status to Pending, and set your future payment date. This will shift the owing balances to be owed in the future instead of now.
If you are shifting a series of installments you will want to be sure to work fro the farthest date to the closest. This way you can best avoid accidents and confusion.
Cancel Pending Payments
Cancelling pending payments requires a larger scope of actions on the invoice. In order to outright eliminate an owing balance an adjustment must be applied to the invoice. This is to reduce the owing balance of the invoice so the system is no longer expecting the payment.
Cancelling a pending payment on a single invoice can be done by adjusting the cost, as seen in our Invoice Actions article. Once the cost of the item(s) on the invoice have been adjusted the owing balance on the invoice is reduced and any pending payments can be eliminated (or at least reduced).
Cancelling a pending payment on multiple invoices can be done by adjusting the cost of invoice items through the Batch Invoicing feature. This would involve reducing the cost of item(s) on the involved invoices to eliminate the owing balance, which would then let you reduce/eliminate the pending payment. Our article Batch Invoicing walks through the general process of using the tool.
Review Declined Credit Card Payments
- Log into your merchant account
- Navigate to Reporting / Analysis > Transaction Search
- Update the Date Range accordingly
- Enter your Transaction ID(s)
- Click Search
- Click a result listing for more details
Note: Online payments go through your merchant account. See Merchant payouts via Uplifter for the payment processors available now and the ones Uplifter used to support.
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Declined credit card transactions may occur for several reasons. Since Uplifter does not handle the card details or process the transaction there is limited information you can obtain through the Uplifter system about declines. Instead, you will want to log into your merchant account. Within their system, navigate to Reporting / Analysis > Transaction Search and update the Date Range fields to ensure the date of your decline(s) are captured. Add the decline's Transaction ID to the Search Criteria. If you are looking for more than one transaction please be sure to update the right-most drop down to "OR" instead of "AND". Click Search and then click on any of the result listings that appear at the bottom of the page to learn more.
To obtain a Transaction ID for a declined payment you can review the decline within Uplifter. This can be done either on the Accounting > Payments page, or on the Accounting > Invoices > Edit invoice page.
Each decline that your merchant account processes will have a Response Code, found among the right column of data. This response will have a code alongside it that indicates what type of response it was and who it was from. Your merchant account provider's list of response codes will offer further insights into what each code means.