Let's say that you run a mental health counseling service. It's a marketplace, and you have counselors who serve the patients. Let's say that you pay 70% of the fee paid by the patient to the counselor.
Traditionally, you will encounter two issues while running a marketplace like this. First, at the month's end, you need to calculate which counselor gets paid and how much. Secondly, when you pay the counselors, you incur the transaction fee.
NeetoCal's Split Payment feature solves both of these problems. While setting up the Split Payment feature, you can mention that you would like 70% of the payment to go to the counselors' account. Now, NeetoCal will automatically split the payment between you and your counselors whenever the client makes a booking. Your counselor will get 70% of the money; the rest will come to you.
In this case, we imagined a mental health counseling service. The same scenario can play out if you manage a yoga studio, health and beauty clinic, a chiropractor service or any other marketplace. The folks who provide the actual service would be called Service Providers in this article. In the example above, counselors were the "service providers". Depending on your business, the service providers could be musicians, technicians, personal trainers, therapists, travel agents, etc.
Enabling Split Payment
To ensure that split payment works, we must go through many steps. Let's go through all of them one by one.
1. Admin setting up stripe account
Visit the Stripe Connect page.
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Stripe will ask you to configure Connect if you have not configured it yet. Make sure you have completed the following section and have a green tick to the left of each section.
Verified email.
Completed your profile platform.
Add business details to activate your account.
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Visit the Connect Settings page. Under Branding on the Appearance section, update the following details listed below and click on the Save branding changes button.
Icon: Stripe's recommended size is 128 px by 128 px.
Logo: Stripe's recommended size is 1000 px by 200 px.
Brand colour
Accent colour
You can see a preview of the changes on the left side. These branding details will be shown in the Stripe onboarding flow to your workspace's members, who will connect their Stripe accounts.
Visit the automatic payout page in Stripe. Under Payout Schedule, switch from Automatic to Manual. Click the Save button. We do this to make enough funds available in your platform account to send the split payments to your organization members
Visit API keys.
Click on Create a secret key.
It will ask for a key name. Enter the split payment for NeetoCal.
Copy the API key shown in the modal. This value will not be shown again. This will be the secret key value to be used later.
Just above the newly created row, there will be a row with the name Publishable Key. Click on the value under the column Token. This will be the publishable key value to be used later.
Visit account settings. At the top right corner, you will see a value that starts with acct_. Note this value. This will be the Identifier value to be used later.
Now login to your NeetoCal account.
Clicking on Settings from the left-hand sidebar.
Click on the Payment Integrations tab.
Click on Connect the Stripe Split Payment card.
Enter the values for the Secret key, Publishable key and Identifier.
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Click on the Connect button.
2. Service provider setting up stripe account
Service providers are the people who will actually provide the service. Here are the steps you(Admin) need to take to set up the service providers.
You (the organization admin) should ask your workspace members (the service providers) to connect their Stripe by following this doc. Then, their Stripe accounts can be used to receive their share of the payment.
3. Setup split payment settings for a meeting
You (the admin) should log into NeetoCal account.
Click on the meeting links tab from the left-hand sidebar.
Create a new meeting link and fill out the necessary information.
Click on the Configure tab.
Click on Split Payment.
To add a new split configuration for a meeting member, click on the
(+)button.The list will show only the people who have connected their Stripe account and are the hosts of this meeting.
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There are two types of splits available:
1. Percentage: This type of split calculates the distribution based on a percentage of the total amount.
2. Fixed: With this option, you can allocate a fixed amount in the currency of your choice. This fixed amount will be deducted from each meeting payment.
Once you have configured split payments, click the Save changes button
That's it! You are all set now. Now, anytime a client makes a payment, the payment will be split between the admin and the service provider.
FAQ
In split payment, who gets the money and when?
Let's take an example to understand how money moves in the case of a split payment. Let's say that on Oct 6, the client makes a payment of $80. The client booked the meeting for Oct 9 at 4 PM.
The moment the client makes the payment, the admin will see a Stripe transaction of $80. So, the admin gets the money in their Stripe account immediately after booking. The admin will retain this amount until the meeting ends on October 9 at 4 PM.
On Oct 9 at 4 PM the meeting ends. At that time, NeetoCal will make a request to Stripe to transfer the service provider's share of the amount from the admin account. Let's assume that, in this case the service provider gets 80% of the total payment. So NeetoCal will ask Stripe to transfer $64 from the Stripe account of Admin to the Stripe account of the Service provider.
When the client paid $80, the admin didn't get the full $80. The admin needs to pay the Stripe transaction fee. When NeetoCal requests Stripe to transfer $64 from the admin account to the service provider account, Stripe doesn't take any transaction fee since it's a transfer from one Stripe account to another Stripe account.
What is payout?
In the last example, we saw that when a client makes a booking, the admin account sees a Stripe transaction. However, it doesn't mean the admin can instantly use that money. Some days later, Stripe will transfer the money from the admin's Stripe account to the admin's bank account. This is called payout.
As per Stripe, the first payout can take a while. Please read this documentation from Stripe to learn more about their payout schedules.
What happens when a booking is canceled?
When a booking is canceled, the client might or might not be refunded, depending on the admin's refund policy.
Which countries support Stripe split payments?
NeetoCal supports all countries that Stripe supports, excluding Indonesia. Here is a list of the countries that Stripe supports.
Stripe demands that the country of the admin account be the same as the country of the service provider's Stripe account. This means that if the admin's country is the USA, then the service provider's country cannot be Mexico or Canada.
However, there is more flexibility for the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) countries. For example, if the admin's country is Portugal, then the service provider's country can be Belgium since both countries come under SEPA.
What happens when a 100% discount code is used?
If a client books with a 100% discount code, NeetoCal will still initiate a split transfer to the host of the meeting link. Please ensure your Stripe platform account has enough balance for this.
An example scenario of how this is useful: Let's say your therapy business has a deal with an institution for therapy sessions for their employees. They pay you in bulk so their employees can use your therapy services. The institution employees can use a flat 100% discount code while making a booking with your therapists. Previously, you'd have to manually payout to all the therapists that had the 100% discount code usage. Not anymore NeetoCal will handle it for you