The first step to accepting online payments is ensuring that payment settings are properly adjusted - giving you maximum control over your billing process.

Once you add a deposit account, payers will immediately be eligible to pay their balances through Bank Account Transfers (ACH). Brightwheel also allows payers to pay via credit and debit cards. Accepting card payments is disabled by default, but this option can be turned on in the Billing Settings.

Turn this setting ON if you would like to accept credit card and debit card payments. We recommend turning this setting on if you currently accept card payments in your center or if you would like families to have the option to pay using credit cards, debit cards, or FSA cards online.

Eligible Card Types: The accepted credit card brands are Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, JCB, Diners Club, and China UnionPay.

With brightwheel Billing, you have full control over how and when you'd like to begin accepting online payments from payers. This is helpful for new programs to brightwheel Billing that would like to set up plans and charges but aren’t ready to accept online payments from payers through brightwheel yet.

Turn this setting ON to allow families to pay online. Families will not be able to pay through the brightwheel app if this setting is off so we recommend turning it on as soon as you are ready to set up brightwheel billing. Payers who have enrolled in autopay will have payments initiated automatically on the due date.

When this toggle is turned OFF, payers will still be able to add and set up their payment methods but won’t be able to submit online payments. This allows your families to prepare to make payments through brightwheel as soon as they set up their accounts. You will still be able to add charges, and recurring charges will post as usual to students’ billing accounts.

When toggling Accept online payments to OFF, you'll have two options: Cancel all pending autopay payments and Collect all pending autopay payments.

You have full control over which online payment methods are acceptable forms of payment. If you do not wish to accept online payments through brightwheel at all and simply want to use the billing feature to log payments that are made offline, that’s totally acceptable and free of charge.

Brightwheel understands how important it is that payments are made on time as often as possible. One way to achieve this is by requiring payers to enroll in autopay. Autopay guarantees that on the invoice due date, the payer's payment method will be charged automatically for the full balance due, including any past due balance.

By default, making autopay required will be turned on for new schools — we recommend keeping it on to ensure on-time payments from all families within your center. Easily manage this setting at any time by following the steps below.

The ability to further customize how autopay is used at your program is available to you! If you require autopay, you can choose to not require it for certain payers or if you don't require it, you can choose to require it for certain payers. This can be a great option if certain families need to opt out of autopay or if you notice families who are always past due, this can help to avoid that!

These settings allow you to pass payment processing fees along to the person making a payment. If enabled, your organization will not be charged payment processing fees. Instead, payers will pay these fees when they go to make an online payment, and they will see how much the fee is.

Some state restrictions may apply to vendors' ability to charge their customers for these fees. It is your responsibility to determine if your organization can pass along such fees to the payer. Brightwheel recommends that you or your administrator review any applicable regulations that may apply before turning on these settings.

You can set up your Late Payment Fee Policy here to configure how your center will charge families for past-due invoices. These settings are optional but must be configured before you can add late payment fees to invoices.