Get paid faster: your customers can now pay an invoice online

Two changes shipped together this month. One is a cleanup you have probably wished for; the other is new money in your account sooner.

All your payment settings, on one page

Setting up a payment provider used to mean guessing which of three screens held the field you needed. The PayPal, Payrexx and PostFinance Checkout credentials lived on Shop → Integrations. The Saferpay and Wallee credentials lived on Shop → Payment types — in a strip above the grid, while the name, icon and visibility of the same method sat in the grid below it. Two halves of one payment method, two screens, nothing linking them.

And because both pages lived inside the Shop module, a business without an online shop could not configure a payment provider at all.

That is now one page: Configuration → General → Payment methods.

It lists every method a customer can choose — in your shop or on an invoice — with its status, and a Configure page each that holds everything about that method: the provider credentials, where the method may be offered, how it looks in your checkout and which documents it generates. One place to look, one place to change.

Three smaller things came with it:

• The list is fixed. The old grid had an Add button, which is how some accounts ended up with three "PayPal" rows and no way to tell which one the checkout used. The new list has one row per method, for everybody. Switching a method off means unticking its channels — reversible, and it never disturbs an order that was already paid with it.
• The status column is honest. Alongside Configured and Not configured it will tell you Enabled but not configured — a method you are offering customers that cannot actually take their money. That situation was always possible; this is the first screen that says so out loud.
• No shop required. The page opens on every plan. The shop-specific columns simply disappear when you don't have the module.

Your old bookmarks still work: Shop → Payment types redirects to the new page, and Shop → Integrations keeps its feed, WineSearcher and Google Merchant settings.

Nothing was migrated and no credential was touched — everything you had entered is exactly where you left it, now shown on one screen.

Payment links: let a customer pay an invoice from the invoice

The new part. Open an invoice, click Payment link, and Vinosoft gives you a web address for that one invoice — with a copy button and a QR code.

Your customer opens it and sees the invoice the way your PDF prints it: header, addresses, line items, totals, with a Download PDF button. Below that, the open amount and a Pay now button per payment method you have enabled. They choose one, pay on the provider's own secure page, and land on a short thank-you. No login, no account, no app. Card details never pass through Vinosoft.

You can send the link however you like: copy it into a letter or a chat, print the QR code on a reminder, use the popup's Email to customer button, or drop the {paymentUrl} placeholder into the standard text of your invoice email so the link rides along with every bill.

Your books stay yours

This is the part we deliberately did not automate. When a payment arrives, Vinosoft does not book it for you. The invoice status doesn't change and no payment entry appears behind your back.

Instead the invoice shows you a card: Payment received, not booked yet — with the amount, the method and the date, and a Register payment link that opens your usual payment dialog already filled in. One click and it is booked like any other payment; the card disappears. You also get an email the moment the money arrives, at whichever addresses you nominate.

An unattended process moving your receivables around, on a charge a provider might still reverse, is not a favour. A one-click confirmation is.

It stays under your control

• The link is created only when you click Create payment link — never as a side effect of opening the screen.
• Revoke link kills the address immediately. Anyone opening it afterwards learns only that the link is no longer valid, not that the invoice exists.
• Links expire after a number of days you set, and stop working as soon as the invoice is settled.
• The amount charged is recalculated at the moment your customer pays, so a partial payment or a credit note in between is taken into account. A link to an already-paid invoice says so instead of charging zero.
• Every provider you can use for payment links starts switched off for them. Credentials you entered for your shop do not quietly become a way to collect invoices — turning that channel on is always a deliberate act.

How to switch it on

1. Open Configuration → General → Payment methods.
2. Click Configure on a provider, check its credentials, and tick Available on payment links.
3. Set the link lifetime and your notification addresses in the Payment links block below the list.
4. Open any invoice awaiting payment. Payment link is now in its action bar.

Step by step, with screenshots of every screen:

• Configure payment methods →
• Let a customer pay an invoice online →

Questions about getting started? Talk to our team or send us feedback.