How To Set Up Instant Payment Checkouts For Services You Sell On Substack
You can also use it on your website, your Facebook, your IG, at your Grandma's house, at the dog park, etc....đ
Iâve been excited to share this from the moment I discovered it. However, in true Kristi-fashion, I MUST test things first and make sure itâs awesome before recommending it to a community I value.
This post is a bit longer than my normal quickie tips because I want to explain clearly how this payment tool is beneficial for certain people.
Who is it best for?
This instant checkout method is best for people who provide services. Coaches, trainers, designers, Zoomers, etc.
I offer Zoom consults, custom graphics packages, and hourly virtual assistance, through Substack and my website on Squarespace.
When I first launched this business, I set up invoicing and payments directly through Squarespace and quickly discovered it was clunky at best. Squarespace didnât offer the streamlined experience my clients deserve and it didnât even come close to the record-keeping I needed for my sanity.
It was a NO.
Then I found WAVE.
Please enjoy the infomercial portion of this post below đ
Wave is accounting software for small businesses (borrrring!)
But WAIT! It doesnât just keep your books, it lets you create instant checkouts for anything you want! And itâs soooo simple that tech-rookies can easily create as many custom âbuy nowâ checkouts as they want.
What do these checkouts look like?
Go to this page on my Substack. Every single one of those orange buttons is an instant payment checkout for individual services I offer.
Now, go check this page on my business website and every one of those buttons leads to the same checkouts.
Click on any of those buttons to see what it looks like for the customer. Each button leads to a professional-looking, custom-branded invoice that pays you the moment your customer does.
Youâre probably wondering, why use WAVE when we have Paypal, Stripe, and all the other well-known payment options out there?
For me, the answer is simple. Iâm running a legit business and Wave connects to my bank account, manages my books, and pays me immediately. No wait time. Try getting that all with Paypal and Stripe.
The instant checkouts are just the cream cheese icing on my cake!
How does it work at the dog park and your Grandmaâs house (like the subtitle says)?
I knew youâd ask. đ
Because Wave is amazing, itâll generate a QR code for your checkouts, too. Save it on your phone and when someone at the dog park wants what youâre selling, whip it out and let them scan it to pay.
If you charge a fee for Zoom calls, youâll want to hear this:
WAVE makes it super simple to get paid and have your clients schedule their own calls.
Hereâs howâŚ
Click on my link where people can book a call with me.
When they access that invoice, they enter their info, pay, and receive a confirmation. You can customize the confirmation with a link to your Zoom scheduler (an add-on that connects to your Google calendar).
In short, clients pay, receive confirmation, and self-schedule their Zoom call through your calendar. Then you wake up tomorrow morning to a delightful Wave email announcing, âCongratulations! You just got paid!â
Itâs basically magic.
Ask ANYONE who has self-booked a Zoom call with me or purchased one-offs and theyâll tell youâŚitâs flawless.
WAVE also allows me to create profiles for clients. Whatâs brilliant about profiles is that my ongoing clients can save their payment info in Wave so they donât have to pull out their card every two weeks when I invoice. (I just figured this part out, sorry, clients!)
Another bonusâŚif you do hourly work you can attach time reports (or any other docs) to send with their biweekly/monthly invoices. This is a brand new feature and I love it. It saves me from having to send separate emails.
If you're a coach you could attach a client survey, a PDF, or whatever you like to your invoices.
So, how much does Wave cost?
I pay $21.00 CAD per month for Wave Pro. If youâre American, that converts to roughly eighteen cents đ
Speaking of Americans, Wave supports both CAD and USD interchangeably. I bill in Canadian dollars and 80% of my clients are American.
Overall, I think itâs pretty fancy that we can add instant payment buttons right here on Substack with very little effort!
This concludes the infomercial portion of your Saturday morning. I hope all you service providers have found this useful!
NOTE: This was the express Kristi-version of the Wave experience. Itâs best to go check it out yourself for more detailed info about how it can work for you. Iâm happy to answer questions based on my experience with it.
And yes, the Wave links in this post are affiliate links. If youâre not using affiliate links for products you regularly recommend? Youâre missing out!
Wave is awesome - I use it for my (side) business since 2018. Just sad they donât connect with banks outside of US/CAN anymore. Quickbooks does but I like Wave more.
I love that you charge in CAD Kristi. It says a lot about your integrity. This post is GOLD. Iâm curious how Wave can support me because my services are such that a prospect needs to read a page of copy before they decide what they want to buy. How can this work? If you have a response Iâm eager to hear itâand take action on how to add Buy buttons to my Substack essays.