4 ways to collect payments in Google Forms

Option 1: Pay ahead: Link to third-party website Request a specific/fixed amount from your customer by adding a standard link to your third-party payment website (like Paypal) in Google Forms confirmation message. The link is shown to the user after he or she submits the form.

(Disclaimer: If you are tired reading this usual answer all over internet, keep reading to learn about other possible ways to collect payments from your users).

Option 2: Pay ahead: Peer-to-Peer payment Add details of your Paypal, Venmo, Cash App or Bank account details, on your form and ask users to pay and upload screenshot as proof of their payment receipt.

Option 3: Pay after: Individual or Bulk follow-up via email Follow-up with your customers individually or in bulk via email, after receiving their responses. Emailing can be done using mail merge tools or writing custom code on your Form using Google AppScript (for the Developers out there).

Option 4: Pay online: Use Add-on to enable payment with Stripe and accept payments directly in your Google Forms

With Neartail add-on you link your Google Form with your existing Stripe account or create one. When your customers are ready for checkout, they can pay with their cards on an automatically redirected Stripe payment page with the order amount set already.

Now, read-on to explore what each of these options offer as advantages and disadvantages. Or jump to the option that interests you!

Say, you are selling fixed-price tickets for your upcoming online seminar at $20/participant. You want your participants to fill-in their details in your Google Form and to buy individual tickets.

You can request them to pay the fixed amount, in this case $20 by adding a standard link to your third-party payment website, like paypal.me in Google Forms confirmation message. Once your participant enters all their details in the registration form, they will submit it. They then get a thank you/confirmation message upon submission along with the link that you have added.

Advantage:
- You specify how much your customer needs to pay (For example, httsp://paypal.me//20. You can specify the amount to the end of paypal.me link)
- No extra transaction fees on such payment. So, you get to receive the entire amount in your account.

Disadvantages:
- Your customer may not click on the link or may not pay.
- Even if they pay from their third-party payment account or their bank account, they cannot send you their transaction details which you can later map it with the orders that you have collected. For example, a user who used two different email ids, one for registration and another linked with Paypal, there is no way you could identify them under one record.

Similar to the above option, you can add your peer-to-peer payment details directly into your Google Forms, as a Title/Description field. You can write detailed instructions to your users on how to use the details to pay ahead before they submit the form. For example, you can include your Paypal email id, Venmo, Cash App or your Bank account details (sometimes as QR codes) and ask them to send their payment. In this case, the onus is on the users to calculate the total amount they need to pay and enter their account ids in your form for your reference.

Optionally, you can ask them for a transaction number using a short answer question and upload the receipt using a short you have a file upload question within the form.

Then they submit the form and you will receive their payment details already in your Google Form responses or linked Google Sheets for manual check. Once verified you are now ready to process their orders!

Advantage:
- No extra transaction fees on peer-to-peer payments. So, you get to receive the entire amount in your account.
- You can create and add more than one accounts of such payment options. Your users can choose to pay using which ever is convenient for them.

Disadvantages:
- If you have used Wire transfer option, at times the transfer takes 48 hours and delayed especially on week-ends.
- Your user who is skeptical about paying upfront may not complete the process, so you may be losing a customer.
- Or a mischievous user who wants to get through the submission may be pretending to submit some fake transaction number or receipt. You will only discover this during the reconciliation process.

Finding out such mistakes and following-up later will only slow down your order preparation/delivery.

This is an offline process. Here you do not expect your users to pay you while they submit their orders. Instead, you gather all orders of the day and later follow-up with your users via email to ask them for payments.

1. Your users choose the products they want to order on your Google Form.
2. Then they submit the form and you will receive their orders in Google Form responses or linked Google Sheets. (Remember to ask for their email address).
3. You prepare individual or personalized bulk email campaigns using one of the mail merge tools to send them emails with a summary and total of their order. You will instruct them where and how to send their payments.
4. Once your user reads the email and makes the payment, you carry out the manual task of manual checking against each order and payment. Then you are all set to order and delivery of the order!

For the developers out there, these are couple of references that might be helpful to you.

1. Google Developer Expert Alan Wells's solution for using both the client side PayPal Javascript SDK and the server side PayPal API to accept a payment from the buyer.
https://groups.google.com/g/google-apps-script-community/c/wos-6RaEvVM/m/MHUfDAxhAwAJ

2. Stripe Elements - Pre-built rich UI components that help you build your own pixel-perfect checkout flows across desktop and mobile.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbx2Chr9wjcCs3Ana4xMnAFmPzBjUxuLkPD_E0HUlZeoW9f8B_cw/exec&sa=D&source=hangouts&ust=1609676813295000&usg=AFQjCNFW0UouDTz7a6AmiOy2GaE5zGrqjw

Advantage:
As this happens after the form submission, both you and your customers can review and agree on the order items and total before payment.

Disadvantage:
Your email should catch the eye of your customer. Even then there is no guarantee that he will make the payment right away. So, it means a lot of follow-ups back and forth.

By now, you might have realized how hectic this is going to be with a lot of manual checks and waiting. Is there a way out?

Are you looking for how to put card payment options on google form? There is nothing like letting your users pay right when they submit their order. It is both easier for your users to finish the order right away and for you to go ahead with processing their order and preparing for delivery. Neartail add-on for Google Forms can help you accept payments via Stripe in your Google form directly.
Here is how you will enable payment with stripe and let your user checkout securely:

1. Install Neartail, customize your Google Form order form with it and setup your Stripe account. Read on for a step-by-step guide to how to setup and enable Stripe payments on your Google Form here: https://neartail.com/order-form/google-forms-order-form-accept-online-payments.html
2. Publish and share your order form with your customers.
3. When your users fills the form and clicks on the submit button, they will be redirected to the payment page. The value from the total amount field will be automatically set as the payment amount.
4. Users can enter their card details and then click on the Pay now button to place their order. If the payment is successful, they get a success message on the confirmation page.

Advantages:
- Enabling payment makes it easy to reconcile your payments. You can view the order details along with the transaction id in your task page.
- t is secure. You have the trust of your customers.

Disadvantage:
- Unlike Peer-to-Peer payments Stripe charges you a flat fee plus a percentage of the total amount. On top of it, Neartail charges a 0.5% application fees. This is an extra fees above your products’ price.
- To overcome this, you may pass this transaction fees on to your customers by including the fee into the final amount to be charged. Read the article below to understand how you can calculate the final amount, adding this transaction fees.
https://neartail.com/order-form/google-forms-payment-integration-pass-transaction-fees-to-customers.html

In fact, a Google Form might be the simplest way to sell your products online. Now that you have 4 options to accepting payments with Google Forms and its advantages and disadvantages clearly discussed, choose the one fits your business. Start collecting payments on Google Forms from your customers today!

Note: If you enjoyed reading this article and like to share your experiences, feedback or comments on this article please write to us at neartail@guesswork.co. We are all ears!