Getting Started with Actionstep Payments

Actionstep Payments is Actionstep's built-in credit card and bank transfer processing tool allowing your clients to pay you using their credit card or bank account, meaning you get paid faster and cut down on your billing data entry.

 

NOTE

Actionstep Payments is currently in Beta testing. If you would like to be part of our Beta testing group, please reach out to Actionstep Support.

How it works

Once enabled for your Actionstep, any invoice that you and your staff create will have a "Pay Now" button added to it, as will the email that sends that invoice. As they review the invoice, your clients will be able to click on that link and be directed to a page where they can enter their payment details to pay you.

Users will also be able to enter details about the retainer that they want to collect for the matter and the retainer will also be available on the payment page for the user to pay. 

When a client pays through Actionstep Payments, Actionstep will mark that invoice as paid in your system. As soon as the funds have cleared, we will automatically deposit the money into your bank account and create all the accounting transactions for the deposit and the online payment fees.

For more details, see Understanding the accounting transaction created by payments to your trust account and Understanding the Accounting Transactions created by Payments to your operating/business account

BETA LIMITATIONS APPLY

The following are known limitations while Actionstep Payments is in beta. These will not necessarily be applicable when the function is available for general use.

• Accounting transactions for the deposit of trust transactions will NOT be created automatically. 
• There is currently a timing issue in relation to trust payments. You will receive an email notification when someone has deposited funds into their trust account however this transfer can take 1-2 days so you will not be able to manually enter the trust deposit in Actionstep until those funds have cleared and appear in your bank transactions. During this time this may cause some issues as staff not on the email notification will not know trust funds have been paid, this deposit wont appear on trust statements, if the customer accesses the payment link again the request for trust funds will still appear. 
• All credit card fees are payable by the law firm, there is no function to charge them onto the client. 
• The client can only pay the full amount owing on an invoice, not a partial payment.
• The invoice payments created by Actionstep Payments will push through to an integrated Xero or QuickBooks Online account but the accounting transactions created for the deposit of funds into the bank account and the withdrawal of fees from the bank account will not flow through to QuickBooks Online or Xero if you system is integrated with them.
• Refunds can be processed but any payment records in Actionstep will have to be reversed seprately.

What it costs

Actionstep Payments has a simple price structure. There will be no setup cost and no monthly subscription costs. Only costs associated with the credit card transactions themselves.

Payment related fees	Cost
Credit Card approval fee	$0.06 per approval
Credit card processing fee	3% of the total amount paid
Note that there can be additional charges for the processing of credit card disputes. See Understanding Credit Card Disputes for more information.

Setup

Before you can use Actionstep Payments, we need to gather details about your business to verify the payments that will be processed will be for a legitimate reason. This means there are two stages to setup Actionstep Payments.

1. Submitting details about your law firm for review
2. Configuring how Actionstep Payments will work for your system

Submitting details about your law firm

While Actionstep Payments is in Beta, this will be done over the phone with an Actionstep staff member. Please note that you will need to supply details about your business, its owners and the bank accounts that it uses. These will include.

• Your firms type of legal entity
• Your firms tax ID
• Your firms contact details and address
• Personal details of each owner with more than a 25% share of the firm
• Each owners SSN
• Each owners Drivers License
• The routing and bank account number of your business bank account

There may be a delay while the submitted details are reviewed. Actionstep will contact you as soon as this review is over.

Configuring how Actionstep Payments will work

Once your application has been approved, you will see a new option on your admin menu called Actionstep Payments. Click here to access your admin settings.

Before your invoices will have the 'Pay Now' button added to it, you will need to configure this screen.

See this article for more details on the settings that are available on the Actionstep Payments Admin screen.