Online Payment

How do I accept online payments?

To start accepting online payments with FreshBooks, you need:

• To have an account with one of the payment gateways that FreshBooks integrates with.
• Enter your gateway information in your FreshBooks account.

Enabling Payment Gateways

You can enable your payment gateways by:

1. Clicking on the Settings link on the top right of your FreshBooks account.
2. In the sub-navigation, click on the Online Payments link.
3. Depending on which payment gateway you have signed up with, you will need to enter some combination of username and/or password.
4. After you enable your payment gateway in your account, a new highlighted checklist titled Allow online payment with: will appear when you create new invoices.

Payment Gateways that FreshBooks Integrates With

The following payment gateways integrate with FreshBooks:

• Authorize.Net
• LANDMARK Merchant Solutions
• PayPal Payflow Pro
• iTransact
• Linkpoint
• PSiGate
• PayPal Website Payments PRO
• PayPal
• 2Checkout.com
• Google Checkout

What are Auto-Bills?

In FreshBooks, Auto-Billing is a feature you can add to a recurring profile so that your client’s credit card is automatically charged whenever an invoice gets sent out from the recurring profile. 

How can I start using Auto-Billing?

The first thing you will need is an account with one of our auto-bill capable payment gateways. The gateways listed here can be used to auto-charge your client’s credit card on a recurring basis:

• Authorize.Net
• LANDMARK Merchant Solutions
• PayPal Payflow Pro
• iTransact
• Linkpoint
• PSiGate

Once set up with an auto-bill capable gateway, there are only two scenarios possible - either you have your client’s credit card information and their permission to automatically charge their card or you don’t.

You Have Your Client’s Credit Card Info:

1. Navigate to the Invoices tab of your FreshBooks account.
2. Click on the sub-tab Recurring
3. You can either create a new recurring profile or edit an existing one.
4. In the Auto-Billing section of the recurring profile, choose your auto-bill capable gateway, enter your client’s credit card info and save the profile.

You Do Not Have Your Client’s Credit Card Info:

When an invoice from your recurring profile gets sent to your client and they have chosen to pay through your auto-bill capable gateway, they will be presented with a drop-down menu with the option to have their credit card automatically charged for future invoices sent from that recurring profile. If they choose this option, your recurring profile will be updated with their credit card information and they will be auto-billed from that point onward.

Auto-bill Limits


In every account, there is an auto-bill limit. This limit is the number of recurring profiles that you can have auto-billing with.  Every new account comes equipped with five free auto-bills.  If you require more than these, you will need to upgrade to a paying package and add extra auto-bills.  Here is the pricing structure:

Which FreshBooks integrated payment gateways work in my country?

Not all payment gateways that FreshBooks integrates with are available in every country. The following table shows the top five countries the majority of our users are from and which payment gateways will work in those countries.

	USA	Canada	UK	Australia	India
Authorize.net
LandMark
iTransact
PayPal Payflow Pro
PayPal Website Payments Pro
PayPal
LinkPoint
PsiGate
2Checkout
Google Checkout

Note:  Keep in mind that both PayPal and 2Checkout work in most countries.

If you have any questions about whether a payment gateway will work in your country, feel free to contact us.

What do I do when an online transaction fails?

An online transaction can fail for a number of reasons - there could be a problem with the credit card used to pay the invoice, your online payment gateway settings, your merchant account, or anything else.  Here is a list of actions you could take when an online transaction fails in your FreshBooks account:

1. Confirm with your client:  Make sure that your client has entered their credit card correctly and their information is up-to-date.
2. Contact your online payment gateway:  Ensure that when you contact your payment gateway, you have the error message you received and know the transaction you are referring to.  More often than not, your payment gateway will be able to solve any transactional problems you are having.
3. Contact FreshBooks:  To report an online transaction failure to FreshBooks you can contact us with a screenshot/copy of the error message and the invoice number you are having trouble with.