Depending on local laws, you may charge requesters for the cost of materials and/or time spent fulfilling their public records requests. With NextRequest's payment module, you can invoice requesters and accept their payments directly in NextRequest. All payments are processed by Stripe. NextRequest does not store your bank information or requesters' credit card information.
Stripe is an online payment processing software for internet businesses. They provide the banking, technical, and fraud prevention infrastructure for individuals and businesses to move money seamlessly. When it comes to NextRequest, we've integrated Stripe's platform into our portals so that agencies can easily invoice requesters and accept payments for costs associated with responding to public records requests - whether that be copies or even staff time costs.
Important Notes
- In order to process payments through NextRequest you will need to purchase NextRequest's payments module. If you are interested in the payments module, please contact Support.
Set Up Payments
Payments are processed by Stripe. NextRequest does not store your bank account information and does not handle any payments directly. You can start accepting payments as soon as your Stripe account is set up.
- Sign in to your portal
-
Navigate to the Admin header and click Portal settings in the drop-down
-
Scroll down and click Payments in the left menu
- Click the Connect with Stripe button
- Follow the prompts and complete the required fields to create a Stripe account
- Click the button Authorize access to this account
- (Optional) Return to the General Settings tab and check the box Charge credit card processing fees to customers? and click Save
Note: If this box is checked, the cost to you of processing the requester's credit card will be added to the requester's invoice.
Set a Staff Member's Hourly Rate
Depending on how you charge requesters for requests, you may want to track the cost of the time each member of your staff spends on a request. You can do this by setting the hourly rate of each staff member in NextRequest. This rate will be used to calculate the cost of the time each staff member spends on a request.
Frequently Asked Questions
Processing payments within the NextRequest platform gives your agency a simple and professional experience for your requesters. Our payment module allows your agency to easily collect fees for records requests, invoice requesters, and so much more.
Are there fees associated with Stripe?
A convenience fee of 2.9% + $0.30 is charged by Stripe for every payment received. This can be deducted from the payment amount or you can choose to pass the fee onto the requester (this is a configuration in Portal Settings > Payments).
Is Stripe PCI compliant?
NextRequest has not done a PCI audit because we do not store credit card information - all of that is done through Stripe and is incredibly secure. Stripe has been audited by a PCI-certified auditor and is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1. This is the most stringent level of certification available in the payments industry.
Does my agency need to fill out a self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ)?
NextRequest has filled out an SAQ questionnaire, which Stripe requires of its users who have certain types of integrations. However, because the integration we have established with Stripe doesn't store any actual data (it's all encrypted) your agency shouldn't need to fill out the questionnaire.
How can I get our payment data from NextRequest to our Finance department?
With the NextRequest payments module, you get access to an additional report in the Reports tab of your portal. This Invoicing and Payments report allows you to create a report with custom dates on paid and/or outstanding invoices in the form of a CSV or XLXS spreadsheet.
On the All Request page report (Run Report button), there is a checkbox for Staff Cost. With the payment module, you can also include the cost of staff time recorded on requests in your request report.
Comments
Let us know what was helpful or not helpful about the article.0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.