Stripe ACH Payments

Teachworks' Stripe Integration supports ACH Payments for companies based in the US.  ACH payments, or Automated Clearing House, are payments where you charge a bank account directly.  

NOTE: You can only accept funds in USD and only from U.S. bank accounts. In addition, your account must have a U.S./USD bank account to accept ACH payments.

ACH payments differ from credit card payments, as accepting bank accounts requires a slightly different initial workflow than accepting credit cards.  In order to accept ACH Payments, the following criteria must be met:

• Bank accounts must first be verified.
• Bank accounts must be authorized for your use by the customer.

After taking both steps for a bank account, the administrator or staff account can begin to process payments to the customer's bank account on their behalf.

Enabling ACH

• In order to enable the ACH payment feature, you must first ensure that you have enabled the Stripe Integration (if you have not, you can find the steps to do so in the following article: Stripe Integration
• When you have the Stripe Integration set up, you can enable the ACH feature in the Stripe Integration settings by enabling the "Process ACH Payments on Behalf of Clients" option.

Verifying Client Bank accounts

After you have enabled ACH Payments, the next step is to begin the process to mark a client's bank account as verified:

1. On a client’s profile go to the Payment Details section and click the “View & Manage” option next to the ACH field.
   
   
2. Enter the bank details.
   
   
   
   
3. The client’s bank account will receive 2 microdeposits in the days after submitting the bank account details.  
   
   
4. Once they have received the deposits, go to the client’s ACH page, click the “Verify” link and enter the 2 deposits.  You can now submit the form.
   
   

NOTE: Microdeposits must be verified within 10 days of being deposited to the customer's bank account.

NOTE: Your customers are also able to add their banking details to the ACH Bank Details Form and verify their account through their own Teachworks accounts.

Processing ACH Payments

1. If a client has a bank account added to their profile, you will be able to view an ACH option on the payment form at the bottom of their invoices in your administrator or staff account.
   
   
2. The Bulk Invoice Payments will automatically use ACH for processing invoice payments if it has been added to a client’s profile.

NOTE: You can choose the payment order for customers that have both credit cards and a bank account associated with their profile, if using the Bulk Invoice Payments feature.

ACH Payment Status

• Unlike credit card payments, which return a result in real time, ACH payments may take up to 5 days for a client's bank to process a payment and mark it as verified or declined.
• Payments that are awaiting verification will appear in your Payments table with the status of "Pending". 
• If a payment is declined, you will receive an email notification that includes the transaction ID, which you can use to view it in your Stripe account.  When this occurs, the "Pending" payment in your Teachworks account will be removed.  If you would like to view the original attempt, you can navigate to the "Payment Attempts" page in your account, which stores the original attempt and the response received from Stripe for the declined payment.

Limitations

All new Stripe accounts will be limited to $6,000 USD a day and $10,000 USD a week for the first 4 months.   The 4 months refers to your payment history i.e. card payments, ACH etc. To be eligible for an ACH limit increase, your account should have enough payment history - at least 3-4 months.   If you would like to get the limit increased, please contact Stripe Support.