Processing fees: who pays and how to pass them on

Dispatch Bros takes zero commission on your customer payments — the only cost of a card payment is the card network's processing fee, charged by Stripe to you as the merchant. You have two levers for that cost: pass it to the customer as a card service fee on invoices and estimates, or absorb it and decide internally (company vs. technician) who carries it when a job closes on a credit card.

Before you start

• Card payments require a connected Stripe account (Stripe setup).
• Fee settings are owner/admin territory — other roles can't change them.

Where the processing fee shows up

Every card charge settles into your Stripe balance net of the processing fee. You can see it per payment on the Payouts & Balance tab: expand any payout and the drill-down table shows each payment's Amount, Fee, and Net columns — the net is what actually reaches your bank.

Passing the fee to the customer (card service fee)

You can add a card service fee percent to invoices and estimates so customers who choose to pay by card cover the processing cost:

1. Set your card fee percent in your invoice settings (see invoice settings), or choose who pays the fee per document when you create it.
2. When you send a document with card payment allowed, the percent is locked onto that document — later settings changes never alter an already-sent invoice.
3. On the public pay page the customer sees the percent disclosed before entering a card, and the payment summary shows a separate Card service fee line on top of the balance and tip.

The fee is your money, not part of the invoice: the invoice balance is reduced only by the actual invoice portion, and the fee rides on top — so your books stay clean.

Splitting the cost internally at job close

If you absorb the fee instead, decide who carries it when a job closes with credit card as the payment method. In Settings, find Credit Card Processing Fee:

1. Enter your Fee percent and click Save.
2. Turn on Company Pays Fee to deduct the fee from the company share (technician payout unchanged), or Tech Pays Fee to deduct it from the technician payout (company share unchanged).
3. If both toggles are on, you choose per job at close time.

This is bookkeeping, not a charge — it changes how the job close math splits the total on your Finance page. It applies only when the job's form of payment is credit card.

Refunds and fees

When you issue a refund, the refunded amount comes out of your balance and goes back to the customer's card — but the card network keeps its original processing fee. The refund modal states this before you confirm, so there are no surprises.

Troubleshooting

• The customer says the total is higher than the invoice — a card service fee percent was on the document. The fee line is disclosed on the pay page before payment; if you didn't intend it, set the document's fee to zero and resend.
• An old invoice doesn't show the new fee percent — by design. The percent is snapshotted when the document is sent, so changing settings never rewrites what a customer was already quoted.
• "Fee percent must be between 0 and 100" — the internal processing fee percent in Settings only accepts a valid percent.
• Finance shares look off on a card job — check which of Company Pays Fee / Tech Pays Fee was enabled when the job closed; the deduction follows the toggle that was chosen for that job.