Card payments with Stripe

Connect your own Stripe account and every invoice carries a pay-by-card link, on the PDF and in the email. When the client pays, the next follow-up round records it. The money goes straight to your Stripe balance. Connecting Stripe also lets you charge monthly fees.

Connecting it

Say "connect Stripe" to Klaudius (your first invoice offers it too). It asks for a restricted key from your Stripe dashboard, checks it, and stores it with your other settings on your computer.

To create the key in Stripe:

1. Open https://dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys and choose Create restricted key.
2. Pick Powering an integration you built, then Choose your own.
3. Give the key the permissions below, and leave everything else off.
4. Create the key, copy it and give it to Klaudius. A live restricted key starts rk_live_.

Permission	Access
Payment Links	Write
Products	Write
Prices	Write
Customers	Write
Subscriptions	Write
Invoices	Write
Checkout Sessions	Read

Klaudius tells you if a permission is missing; add it in Stripe and ask Klaudius to check again. It refuses a full secret key (one starting sk_live_), because that can do anything in your Stripe account. A test-mode key is fine for trying things out, but its links can't take a real payment.

For Stripe to work out VAT or GST as well, the key needs two more permissions. See VAT and GST.

Once it's connected

• Every new invoice gets a single-use pay-by-card link for exactly its total, printed in full on the PDF and included in the email. Your bank details stay on the invoice too.
• If a link can't be made (for example, the key has lost a permission), the invoice is still drafted with your bank details, and Klaudius tells you what Stripe said.
• Cancelling an unpaid invoice switches its link off.
• Each follow-up round records what Stripe has collected, marking invoices paid and clients converted. It flags the unusual cases for you to sort out in Stripe: a payment on an invoice you had cancelled or replaced, an invoice paid twice, or a bank payment still not cleared after two weeks. Refunds are yours to make in your Stripe dashboard.

Stripe's own fees apply to what you collect through it. Klaudius charges no fee on any of this.