Payments

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Payments Overview

Cortado handles the full payment lifecycle for your events — from setting up a deposit schedule on the quote, to collecting card and ACH payments through Stripe, to issuing refunds when things change. Everything syncs back to the invoice so your balances always match reality. Customers pay through the Customer Portal via Stripe’s embedded checkout. You can also record offline payments (check, cash, wire, ACH) directly against an invoice.

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Payment Schedules

A payment schedule breaks a single invoice into one or more scheduled payments, each with its own description, due date, and amount. This is how you structure deposits, installments, and final balances.

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Quote Schedules vs Invoice Schedules

• Quote payment schedules support both fixed amounts and percentages. Percentage schedules recalculate automatically if the quote total changes.
• Invoice payment schedules use fixed amounts only. When a quote is accepted, percentage schedules are converted to fixed dollar amounts on the resulting invoice.

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Schedule Templates

When creating or editing a schedule, choose a starting template: After applying a template, you can add, remove, or adjust schedules freely. The total of all schedules must match the invoice total exactly — Cortado warns you if the math doesn’t balance.

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Editing Schedules

Schedules on a pending invoice can be edited directly from the invoice editor’s Payments tab. Once any payment is recorded, amounts are locked; you can still edit descriptions and due dates on schedules that haven’t been paid.

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Schedule Statuses

• Pending — due date in the future, no payment yet
• Partial — some amount paid, balance remains
• Paid — fully paid
• Overdue — due date passed without full payment
• Cancelled — invoice was voided
• Waived — marked as not collected

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Stripe Checkout

Customers pay through Stripe’s embedded checkout, launched from the Customer Portal. The checkout flow supports:

• Credit and debit cards — processed immediately
• ACH / US bank transfer — lower fees for larger amounts, with automatic microdeposit verification when needed

The invoice’s payment method configuration controls which options the customer sees. By default, both card and ACH are offered; use the per-invoice override (see Invoices > Payment Methods Override) to change this for individual invoices.

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Checkout Session Timer

Each checkout session has a countdown timer visible to the customer. If the session expires before they complete payment, they can start a new one. The timer turns red in the final five minutes.

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ACH Microdeposit Verification

When a customer pays via ACH with a bank that requires verification, they’re routed through Stripe’s hosted bank verification flow. The customer sees a Verify Bank Account prompt on the schedule, with an in-portal iframe for completing verification without leaving Cortado.

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Tips and Gratuity

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Customer-Selected Tips

The portal presents customers with a tip selector at checkout. Default percentages are 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%, but you can customize this under tip selector settings. Customers can:

• Pick from the preset percentages
• Type a custom amount (if enabled in settings)
• Choose no tip (unless tips are enforced)

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Enforced Tips

Set a mandatory minimum tip percentage per event type in Settings > Payments. When enforced, the tip selector auto-adjusts to meet the minimum and the customer cannot go below it.

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No-Tip Message

You can configure a custom message shown to customers who choose not to tip — useful for explaining how your team relies on gratuity.

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Recording Manual Payments

For payments that happen outside Stripe (checks, cash, wire transfers, offline ACH), use Log Manual Payment on the invoice detail page or the payment schedule card. Supported manual payment methods:

• Check — paper check payment
• Wire Transfer — bank wire
• ACH — electronic bank transfer handled outside Stripe
• Cash — cash payment

For each manual payment, record:

• Payment method
• Amount (defaults to the schedule’s remaining balance)
• Payment date
• Reference number (check number, wire reference, etc.)
• Notes
• Whether to email a receipt to the customer

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Mark as Paid

For a quick way to fully settle an invoice with a single manual payment, use Mark as Paid from the More Actions menu. This logs a manual payment for the full remaining balance.

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Voiding a Manual Payment

If you recorded a manual payment by mistake, you can void it from the payment history. Voiding prompts you to send the customer a void notification email so they aren’t confused about receipts.

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Refunds

Cortado supports three refund outcomes on Stripe payments. Open the Process Refund dialog from the payment history on any Stripe payment.

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Refund Amount

• Full refund — returns the complete refundable amount
• Partial refund — choose a custom amount (with a slider and 25%/50%/75% presets)

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Will the Customer Repay?

After choosing the refund amount, pick one of two outcomes:

• No — Goodwill refund: The invoice total is reduced by the refund amount. The invoice may show as fully paid once the refund processes. Use this for credits, complimentary adjustments, or situations where the customer no longer owes the refunded amount.
• Yes — Customer will repay: The invoice shows as partially paid. The customer still owes the refunded amount and will need to pay again.

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Refund Notifications

When a refund is processed, the customer receives an automatic email confirmation with the refund amount, date, and reason (if provided). Cortado also tracks refunds on the payment record so your history stays accurate.

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Disputes

When a customer disputes a Stripe payment (chargeback), Cortado tracks it automatically. The invoices page shows a banner when disputes need a response, linking to the Disputes dashboard where you can view each dispute’s status, reason, and amount. Disputes are surfaced in a dedicated settings page so you never miss one — responding within Stripe’s deadline is critical to winning a chargeback.

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Payment Reliability

Cortado is built with multiple safeguards around payment processing:

• Idempotent payments — manual payments and charges use idempotency keys so retries don’t create duplicate charges
• Concurrent-safe balances — payment and refund totals update atomically, preventing race conditions
• Automatic retries — background operations (webhooks, notifications, refunds) use tiered retry policies to recover from transient failures
• Reliable webhooks — Stripe events are processed with duplicate detection and retry handling

Most of this runs invisibly in the background. If a payment or refund fails, you’ll see a clear error message and the system will retry transient failures automatically.

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Best Practices

1. Use a deposit schedule — collecting a deposit up front reduces cancellation risk and smooths your cash flow.
2. Offer ACH on larger invoices — cards have flat fees; ACH saves real money on high-dollar events.
3. Record manual payments promptly — keep Cortado in sync with deposits you received by check or cash so statements stay accurate.
4. Respond to disputes quickly — check the Disputes dashboard whenever the invoices page banner appears; Stripe deadlines are short.
5. Choose goodwill vs repay carefully — goodwill refunds close out the invoice, repay-style refunds leave a balance owed. Pick based on whether the customer owes you that money.
6. Configure enforced tips per event type — wedding and corporate events often benefit from a mandatory minimum to protect your team’s tip income.