Lawn care payment processing that puts every dollar on the right invoice

Okason handles lawn care payment processing as one ledger. Cash handed over at the door, a check in the mail, a card or ACH bank transfer through the invoice payment link: all of it becomes a Payment Record tied to the invoice it settles and the customer who paid.

Lawn care payment processing starts with the cash at the door

Cash is the money most likely to go missing from the books, because the record of it lives in somebody’s memory until Friday night. Record it before you pull off the property and it never gets there.

Tap Record Payment on the invoice and the form opens already filled in: the customer, the invoice, Cash as the method, the amount due, and today’s date.

If it’s a check, tap the Check chip and the required Check Number field appears. Backdate it to the day it actually arrived — future dates are blocked. Notes takes up to 500 characters and stays internal; it never shows on the receipt.

Save it and the payment is recorded immediately with a sequential Payment Number (PMT-0001, PMT-0002), never edited, never reused.

Any team member can do this. Owner, Manager, or Crew Member — the person who was handed the cash records it, instead of driving back to tell you about it.

Card and ACH payments for lawn care write themselves into the books

Getting paid online should not create data entry. When a customer pays the link on their invoice, Okason writes the payment record itself the moment the processor confirms it — amount, transaction ID, the card brand or bank name with the last four digits, and a receipt link.

The invoice moves to Paid or Partial without you touching it, and your phone gets a push notification that the money came in.

Card and ACH bank transfer both run through Stripe Connect. If a bank transfer bounces after the fact, the payment flips to failed, so you’re never counting money that didn’t land.

What you pay in lawn care credit card processing fees

The honest version: what the card company charges is what you pay. Okason takes no cut on top of the processor’s rate, and the numbers sit on the pricing page instead of in a terms-of-service document.

On a big install or a season prepay, steering the customer to ACH bank transfer is usually the cheapest lever you control.

Shopping for lawn care autopay software or a card-on-file setup for monthly maintenance customers? Recurring billing for lawn maintenance clients walks through how the options differ.

The check that arrives before you know what it’s for

A customer mails one check covering three months of mowing. Or a lump sum with no invoice number on it. Most software makes you guess or leave it off the books.

Record it with No invoice — record as unapplied and the money is on the books immediately, badged amber so it’s obvious it still needs a home. When you work out what it settles, Apply to Invoice shows that customer’s outstanding invoices and moves the payment across in full.

If an unapplied payment sits for more than 7 days, a banner on the Payments screen tells you how many there are and what they total. One payment applies to exactly one invoice — to spread a lump sum, apply what fits and record the rest separately.

Partial payments: take half now, the rest on completion

Half down on a patio install, the balance when it’s finished. A customer who pays what they can this week.

Enter less than the balance and the invoice moves to Partial rather than sitting unpaid. Amount paid and amount due recalculate on every save, so the balance on screen is the real number and you never do the arithmetic yourself.

Okason also won’t let you record something impossible — an amount over the remaining balance, or a date in the future. The deposit you wrote into the estimate lands against the invoice it belongs to.

One list that answers “what did we collect this week?”

Owners and Managers get a Payment List for the whole company — payment number, customer, amount, method, status, date, and the invoice it settles, newest first.

Two stat cards sit above it: Collected this month, which follows your date range, and Unapplied, which always shows the company-wide count and total.

Filter by Method, Status, Date Range, or Customer, and search by payment number, customer name, or invoice number.

At tax time, the web list exports to CSV — payment number, date, customer, invoice number, amount, method, status, check number, notes — respecting whatever filters you have on. That’s the accountant handled, instead of rebuilding a season from bank deposits, and it’s the same record you’ll want when you go hunting for tax deductions you might miss. Export is owner-only.

Receipts, refunds, and fixing the one you got wrong

Cash disputes come down to who remembers what. Send Receipt emails written confirmation for any succeeded payment, right after you save it or from the payment later. If there’s no email on file, Okason asks for one and saves it to the customer record.

Charged the wrong card, or charged twice? The owner can refund a card or bank payment in full or in part, with an optional reason that carries through to the processor.

Cash and check are fixed the other way: the owner deletes the payment, the invoice balance and status reverse automatically, and you record it again correctly.

Every payment also lands in the customer’s timeline beside their jobs and invoices, attributed to whoever recorded it.

How Okason compares on landscaping payment processing

Every competitor treats the processing fee as something to explain later, and none of them are built around a two-person crew collecting in the field.

Where this matters most is the part no competitor page is built for: collecting where the work happens. The customer pays the link at the kitchen table while you load the trailer, or hands you a check you record before pulling away. Either way it’s on the books before the next property.