Keeping a card on file
A customer paying online can choose to leave their card on file, which lets you charge the next completed job automatically instead of waiting to be paid — and they can remove it at any time from the same link they used to save it, without having an account or a password anywhere.
Seasonal customers are the same customers every year. A card on file turns "finish the job, send the email, wait" into "finish the job, and it is paid" — for the ones who opt in.
How a card gets on file
The customer puts it there. When they pay online from a completion email, they can choose to leave the card for next time. You cannot add one on their behalf, and there is no screen where you type a card number — LakeOps never sees it.
What they are agreeing to
The exact words they agreed to are kept, with the date and time. Not a checkbox that was ticked — the full text as it read that day, so "I never agreed to that" has an answer. If the wording ever changes, the old agreement stays as it was for the people who signed it.
What happens when the next job closes
The job prices itself as usual and the card is charged for the balance. The customer gets the same completion email showing what was done, and a receipt once the money lands. Nothing is charged before the work is finished.
When a charge declines
A card that is expired, canceled or over its limit is a normal thing, not an incident. The charge fails, the job simply stays unpaid, and the customer is emailed so they can pay it themselves. It is then ordinary outstanding money and shows up on the balances report like anything else.
Taking it off
The customer can remove the card from the same link they used to save it. No account, no password, no phone call to your office. A card somebody cannot get rid of without asking permission is not a card they should have left with you, and a business that makes it hard is the reason people distrust saving one at all.
Once it is gone it is gone: nothing further is charged, and the record that they had agreed stays, marked as withdrawn.
Still stuck? Ask us — or go back to the help center.