LakeOps Payments: letting customers pay online
Last updated September 13, 2026
LakeOps Payments is the optional way to get paid where your customers pay online from their completion email or statement and the money settles to your own Stripe account and bank, for a small percentage service fee per payment; the alternative is to bill customers yourself and pay no payment fee.
There are two ways to get paid for the work LakeOps tracks, and choosing between them is the only money decision setup asks of you.
The two ways
| Way | What it means |
|---|---|
| Bill customers yourself | Jobs still complete and still price themselves. You collect however you already do, and record what comes in. No payment fee, ever. |
| LakeOps Payments | Customers get a pay button on their job page and their statement. Money settles to your own Stripe account and pays out to your bank. A small percentage service fee per payment. |
Both are legitimate, and plenty of shops stay on the first one forever. You can turn LakeOps Payments on later, and pause it again, without losing anything.
What turning it on gets you
- Customers pay your company, not us. The payment page carries your name, logo and color, and your name is on their card statement — see your name on checkout and card statements.
- The money goes to your Stripe account and pays out to your bank on the schedule Stripe sets for your account. LakeOps never holds it — see payouts.
- Bank payment is offered first — ACH in the United States, pre-authorized debit in Canada. On a $2,000 dock bill a bank payment costs a few dollars where a card costs tens, and most customers do not mind at all when it is the default. See bank payments.
- Card is there for the people who want it, and a customer can keep a card on file so the next job is paid the moment it closes.
- Receipts, refund emails and paid-in-full pages go out in your name without you doing anything.
- You are the merchant. Refunds and chargebacks are between you and your customer — see disputes and chargebacks.
Turning it on
Settings → Payments, then Turn on LakeOps Payments. About ten minutes of Stripe’s own plain questions — your business, its tax ID, the person responsible, a bank account. No API keys, nothing technical. What to have ready, and what LakeOps fills in for you, is in setting up LakeOps Payments.
If the panel says LakeOps Payments isn’t available on your account yet, get in touch and we will sort it out. Nothing else about your account changes in the meantime.
What the panel tells you
The LakeOps Payments panel on Settings → Payments is always in one of these states. The pay button only ever appears while Stripe actually lets your account take money.
| The panel says | Pay buttons | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| On and taking money | Showing | Nothing. The panel shows your fee and whether payouts are enabled, with a link to your Stripe dashboard. |
| Setup isn’t finished | Hidden | Press Finish setting up payments and you are asked for what is missing. |
| Your details are being reviewed | Hidden | Nothing. Payments switch on by themselves when the review finishes, and the panel changes if anything more is needed. |
| Details needed by a date | Still showing | Press Finish in Stripe before that date, or payments go on hold. |
| Online payments are on hold | Hidden | Press Finish in Stripe to see why and what is needed. Money already paid to you is not affected. |
| Paused | Hidden | You turned it off. Turn on LakeOps Payments resumes it. |
You do not have to be watching the panel. Every admin on your account gets an email, once, when payments switch on, when a review of your details asks for more, when a deadline for details is set, and when payments go on hold. LakeOps also reads your account back from Stripe every night, so the panel is never describing last month.
The fee
A percentage of each payment — 1% as standard, and the figure for your account is on the panel. It is worked out before sales tax, taken from the payment when it is made, and listed against each payment in your Stripe dashboard. There is no monthly fee, no minimum, and nothing at all on checks or cash, or if you bill your customers yourself. The arithmetic, with examples, is in the LakeOps Payments fee.
Turning it off
One button, Turn off LakeOps Payments, and it is a pause. Pay buttons disappear from your customers’ pages and you go back to billing customers yourself. Your Stripe account, its history and every card a customer saved are kept, and existing payment records in LakeOps are untouched.
- Refunds still work while you are paused: a refund always goes back through the Stripe account that took the payment.
- Turning it back on picks up the same account. If Stripe still lets it take money, pay buttons come straight back, with no setting up again; if Stripe needs something first, you are sent to finish that.
- Saved cards are not charged automatically while you are paused.
It does not stop anybody writing you a check
Some of your customers have written a check every spring for twenty years and are not going to start tapping a pay button. So the completion page, the statement page and both of those emails can carry your remit-to details underneath the pay button — who to make it payable to and where to mail it — for anybody who would rather. Tick Accept checks under Settings → Payments, in “Customers who want to mail a check”, and fill in the name and the mailing address.
It is an addition, not a fork. The pay button stays the primary action; the check details sit under it in small type. Without a mailing address the option is not offered at all — a “make it payable to” with nowhere to send it is a riddle, not an option.
When the check arrives you record it by hand like any other payment and the balance updates.
What it does not change
Everything else about money works the same whichever way you are paid. Jobs price the same way, the completed-work report reads the same, and a check handed over at the dock is recorded by hand either way. LakeOps Payments decides whether a pay button exists — see getting paid.
Still stuck? Ask us — or go back to the help center.