PayPal: Setting up ClickBook for automatic online customer payments

Mark Demicoli  18 August 2010 07:19:10 PM

PayPal is a convenient and safe online tool to request and send money to people and business online.  It has grown so dramatically over the last few years that it has become commonplace for businesses to offer a PayPal payment option alongside Credit Cards.

The nice little advantage of using PayPal, in terms of security, is that you are only giving your credit card details to PayPal and not to lots of people and businesses directly, or even to ClickBook.  We like this fact because we don't have to handle any one's credit card details, which would be a major risk.

We have just finished 'integrating' PayPal wtih ClickBook.  What this means is that you can now request and receive pre-payment for appointments by barely lifting a finger.  Customers only give their card details to PayPal and never to ClickBook.  PayPal directly credits your account and 'voila',money in the bank.

Step 1. The first step is to get yourself a PayPal account.  Please visit PayPal.com for this task.

Tip:  Registering on PayPal takes minutes, however PayPal will take you through certain steps to verify who you are, by transferring random amounts (small number of cents) into your bank account.  You will then have to tell PayPal what these numbers are.  It is a very secure way of verifying who you are, so that when you come to transferring your money out of PayPal, the money will definitely go into your own bank account.


Step 2. The second step is telling ClickBook the email address you used to register on PayPal.com.  To do this, visit the PayPal tab in your ClickBook Booking Center, and enter the email address that you used to register on PayPal.  This field will default to your ClickBook email address, but does not have to be the same.




Step 3 - Enable PayPal

Select "Enable PayPal" and submit the form.  We have now enabled PayPal, however, nothing is going to happen until we set up at least one Payment Rule.


Step 4. Payment Rules

This is the fun part, and it can get a little tricky if we try to get too creative here.  Payment Rules are designed to be as simple or as complex as you desire.  In essence, Payment Rules allow you to set rules for specific services, entire locations, or a combination of both.

So what rules are we talking about?  Lets take a peek below.  Here is the form that appears when you click "Add Payment Rule".   Lets start with the basics.  Julie Jones, our fictitious businesslady for the day,  Julie wishes to request pre-payment for all services, simple as that.  To do this, Julie sets up her PayPal details as above, and creates a single Payment Rule as shown below.  Quite simply, Julie has named the rule "All Services" and has ticked the  "Request full pre-payment" option.  That's it!




Getting fancy

You guessed, there are more tricks in this dog.  A payment rule can be narrowed in focus, and told to behave slightly differently based on requirements.  Lets take a look at the Locations & Services section in the above image.  By default, this section is empty, which means that the Payment Rule applies to all services in all locations.  We could however, decide that we only want to request payment for certain services or locations, or further, to request pre-payment for certain services and leave the status as PENDING (ie NOT Confirmed) until payment is made.

Example:  Julie Jones offers some services which require a huge amount of effort to prepare for.  No Shows can really drag down her bottom line for these type of services, so she decides that she requires full pre-payment for such services.  To do this, she clicks the Add/Remove link in the Locations & Services section.  The Service Selector pops up and Julie clicks on the desired service(s) and / or location(s).





Finally, Julie Jones selects the third option in the Rules section.  This option instructs ClickBook that appointments for the service(s) selected are not Confirmed until payment is received.  You will know when payment is received because PayPal will send you a receipt, one to the customer, and ClickBook will send you a final appointment confirmation.  *Badabing*!



Interesting Fact
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal went on to establish SpaceX, one of the most promising space travel startups in the world.

On December 23, 2008, SpaceX announced that it had won a Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract, which guarantees NASA missions worth US$1.6 billion for resupplying the International Space Station, after the Space Shuttle retires in 2010.

In 2005, SpaceX announced plans to pursue a manned commercial space program through the end of the decade.

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