You can integrate your Stripe account with Harvest so your clients can pay you online via the Web Invoice. Besides removing the administrative overhead of collecting checks, online payment often means that clients pay sooner.

Additionally, if you send recurring invoices, the Stripe integration will allow your clients to set up automatic recurring payments. 

The Stripe integration offers two payment options:

• Credit card: This option is available for invoices in any currencies supported by your Stripe account.
• ACH (bank transfer): This lower-fee option is available if you’re a United States-based business, and only for invoices in USD. Your clients can make payment from a US bank supported by Plaid, the system Stripe uses to authenticate bank accounts. Note that not all institutions are supported by Plaid for ACH payments. 
  • Stripe may take up to five business days to record an ACH payment’s success or failure and pass that information on to Harvest—until then, the Web Invoice will be marked with a Pending stamp and its status on the Invoices overview will remain Sent or Late. Note that the payment itself, if successful, can take up to seven business days to be reflected in your available Stripe balance.
  • Initially, your Stripe account might not allow individual ACH transactions over $2,000 USD or transaction totals over $10,000 USD per week. To inquire about increasing these limits, please contact the team at Stripe directly.

More about payouts and fees

• Payments made via the Harvest and Stripe integration go directly into your Stripe account and then Stripe pays those out to your bank periodically (that timeframe is fully dependent on Stripe). 
• In most cases, domestic US transaction fees are 2.9% + $0.30 for credit card payments or 0.8% (up to a maximum of $5) for ACH payments. For other applicable fees and more information, visit Stripe’s pricing page for your country.

Integrating with Harvest

Activating

1. Go to Settings > Integrations > Online payment and click Connect with Stripe.
2. If you already have a Stripe account, sign in. If you’re new to Stripe, fill out the quick form.

Once the Stripe integration has been activated, credit card payments will be enabled automatically. You can choose to disable those later, though. You’ll need to opt in to ACH payments.

• To opt in to ACH payments, check the Enable bank transfer (ACH) payments box and click the Save Stripe settings button.
  • You'll also need to accept Stripe's ACH Terms of Service before you're able to accept ACH payments through Stripe, including through the Harvest and Stripe integration. If you don't, your clients may see an error message and be unable to make an ACH payment to you. To accept the Stripe ACH Terms of Service, click through to https://stripe.com/docs/ach, make sure you're logged into Stripe, then click the Enable ACH button at the top of the ACH docs page.
  • ACH payments can only be made from a US bank supported by Plaid, the system Stripe uses to authenticate bank accounts.
• To disable credit card payments, uncheck the Enable credit card payments box and click the Save Stripe settings button.

After you enable your chosen payment method(s), you can check the Include link to Web Invoice for online payment box whenever you send an invoice. When your client views the Web Invoice by clicking the link in the invoice email, a button at the top right will offer one or both payment methods, depending on what you’ve enabled and the invoice’s currency. To see what this looks like for your clients, you can click into any invoice and then click the Web Invoice button.

Deactivating

You can disable payments via Stripe if you’re no longer using the service. You must go to Stripe to disconnect your Harvest and Stripe accounts.

1. From your dashboard in Stripe, head to Settings (gear icon in the top right) and then Business settings.
2. In the Team and security section, click Installed apps.
3. Under Connect Extensions, find Harvest and click the Revoke access icon (circle with a line through it).
4. Click Revoke to confirm.