About payments

Money reaches you two ways: a customer pays through Qcom, or they pay you some other way and you record it. Both end up in the same place — Operations → Payments — so your books are one list, not two.

A payment is not an invoice, and not an order

Three different things, easy to confuse:

• An invoice says what a customer owes.
• An order says what they asked you for.
• A payment says what actually arrived.

One invoice can take several payments. An order can be paid before anything ships, or delivered long before it's paid. Keeping them apart is what lets Qcom tell you what's outstanding.

What has to be set up

An active payout destination. Qcom needs a bank account or mobile money destination before it can start a new online checkout for you. You can still record money you received outside Qcom. See Manage payment connections.

The Growth plan or above. Taking payments online is a Growth feature. Below that, customers can't pay you through Qcom — you can still record payments you took yourself, and your invoices show your payment instructions instead of a Pay button.

How money arrives

| They paid | It reaches you by | | --- | --- | | Through a Qcom checkout link | Straight into Payments, already confirmed | | Cash, bank transfer or mobile money in person | You record it, and a colleague confirms it | | On another website you own | A connection you set up sends it across | | Mobile money, with an alert we spotted | As an SMS alert, for you to match up |

Where each part lives

The Activity summary shows today's confirmed amount and the seven-day trend. Use the eye beside the amount to hide or show the summary values. This choice is remembered for your workspace and sign-in on that browser. Open Details to see payment sources and, if you have payout access, the settlement destination. Close it to hide those rows together. Hiding details does not change a payment or your permissions.

• Activity lists every payment and is where you confirm or reject the ones needing a decision.
• Manage holds your payout destination, your earnings and withdrawals, and connections to other sites.

What customers hear after paying

Receiving money and completing the customer's request are separate steps. A booking is confirmed only when Booking confirms it; paying an application fee does not approve the application. If the result still needs checking, the customer should see that distinction rather than an unsupported confirmation.

When the confirmed transaction has saved details, the payment acknowledgement can include them: the items and agreed pickup instructions for an order, the dates and people for a booking, the invoice number and balance, or the renewal period. These come from the customer's accepted transaction. Changing a Catalog item later does not change what they bought or agreed to.

A payment acknowledgement does not mean a receipt or confirmation PDF is ready. Documents are available only when they have been prepared and access is permitted. Customers can ask about the payment or next steps in the same conversation; available detail and delivery depend on the channel and the customer's access.

Who can do what

Seeing payments, taking them, reviewing them and refunding them are four separate permissions, and none of them comes with a standard role — a workspace owner or admin has them, and anyone else needs them granted.

Refunding is stricter still: only an owner holds it automatically, and whoever asked for a refund can't be the one who approves it.

Related

• Manage payment reviews
• Manage payment connections
• Why a payment didn't reach you
• Connect an external payment webhook
• About invoices
• Payment countries and currencies