Time sensitive: Upcoming webinars for surcharging

Surcharging & Merchant Responsibilities
Thursday, May 9th · 9:30 AM PT
Join Dubsado and our consulting partner, Dan from Redbridge Debt & Treasury Advisory. Discover how Dubsado has simplified surcharging for merchants, minimizing their responsibilities. We'll provide a live demo of our surcharging solution and conclude with an open Q&A session, giving you the opportunity to ask questions and gain valuable insights. Register here.

Pricing with Purpose: Amplify Your Profits
Wednesday, May 15th · 9:00 PM PT
​Are you a business owner unable to take advantage of surcharging due to location, business model, or personal preference? Join Taryn, Dubsado's Community and Partnerships Leader, for an enlightening webinar designed to help you strategically price your services, account for credit card processing fees, and maintain profitability. Register here.

All about surcharging

As a business owner, you know that every dollar counts, and credit card processing fees can take a significant bite out of your hard-earned profits. That's why we're excited to introduce an exciting feature that not only helps you offset those fees but also ensures your business stays compliant: Surcharging! 💳

😬 Have you been surcharging the wrong way?!

We've noticed that many of our users have been using workarounds to apply surcharging to their invoices, such as adding line items, tax items, or even invoicing outside of Dubsado. 🙅‍♀️ While we understand the desire to offset credit card processing fees, these methods can put your business at risk such as hefty fines, as they may not comply with the strict rules and regulations set by Mastercard and Visa.

At Dubsado, our top priority is ensuring that our business owners are protected and compliant. That's why we've partnered with a compliance agency to create a surcharging solution that not only effectively offsets your credit card processing fees but also adheres to card network rules and regulations. While other systems in our industry may offer similar features, we've gone the extra mile to ensure that our solution is compliant and safeguards your business from potential risks. Many systems on the market are putting business owners at risk with their “surcharging solutions”. One example, this feature is only available in US and Canada with some US regions restricted from using it. And we put all those safeguards in place for you, automatically. We got your back!

🤔 What is Surcharging?

Surcharging is the practice of adding a small fee to credit card transactions to help cover the costs of processing those payments. By implementing surcharging, you can offset a significant portion of your credit card processing fees, ultimately increasing your profitability without raising your prices across the board.

⚠️ It's important to note that surcharging is an optional feature that must be enabled in your account settings. If surcharging doesn't work for your business, there's no need to take any action. However, if you're interested in implementing surcharging, simply follow the steps below to get started.

🌟 With surcharging in Dubsado you get:

1. System compliance: In Dubsado, surcharging is compliant with card network rules and regulations, ensuring you can implement this feature with confidence.
2. Transparent pricing: Your clients will see clear and upfront communication about the surcharge fee during the checkout process, keeping you compliant.
3. Flexible options: Choose to enable or disable surcharging at the brand level based on your unique business needs.
4. Seamless integration with autopay: With surcharging turned on, new autopay enrollments will include the surcharge fee when a client pays with credit card.
5. Automatic payment receipts: Launching with surcharging are automatic payment receipts that, you guessed it, automatically send to your clients when making a payment with you. No need to do this manually anymore. But also, this added feature keeps you complaint with surcharging. More info below.

📝 Important notes:

• Surcharging is an optional feature that must be enabled in your account settings. If surcharging doesn't work for your business, there's no need to take any action. However, if you're interested in implementing surcharging, simply follow the steps below to get started.
• Surcharging is currently available for users in the United States and Canada, with some state and territory restrictions. Surcharging is not available in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, or Puerto Rico.
• Surcharging applies to credit card transactions only and cannot be applied to debit cards, ACH, or other payment methods. Nothing you need to do for this, we handle all that for you automatically once surcharging is setup.
• When issuing refunds for transactions with a surcharge, the surcharge amount will also be refunded to the client.
• Existing autopay enrollments will not be affected by enabling surcharging. Your clients will need to re-enroll in autopay for surcharging to take effect.

Let’s dive into getting this set up on your account

Your easy setup

To use surcharging, you must: be based in US or Canada, have Dubsado Payments connected, and have the payment option for credit cards turned on.

If all the above is true, in Dubsado, click settings >> payment settings click "set up" under surcharging.

Then, enter in where your business is legally registered. We search for area compliance based off of where you have registered your business.

If you business location meets the location criteria and you agree to the terms, you can click "Enable surcharging"

Then, you will be directed back to your payment settings and now surcharging is turned on brand wide. Nothing else you need to do!

For a more detailed guide on setting up surcharging, check out our help article.

What your client sees

Your client will click pay now like usual on your invoices.

Your client will see the new Dubsado Payments payment screen and if they choose card, they will see the surcharge fee pop up. (Reminder, surcharging is only legal to charge on credit cards. If a client uses a debit card, the surcharge will not show)

When they enter in their card and then click review payment, they are directed to a screen to confirm the payment. (This is another compliance requirement with surcharging)

If you client used a debit card, on the confirmation screen they will be shown that the surcharge fee is not applicable. Likewise, if your clients choose the ACH option, the surcharging fee will not apply either (Surcharging is not allowed to be used on ACH transactions)

🧾 Automatic transaction receipts

With the launch of surcharging, we're also introducing automatic transaction receipts. These are receipts that get sent to your clients automatically when they make a payment.

These receipts will be sent to clients from your connected email address and cannot be edited or turned off.

This feature ensures compliance with surcharging regulations and is enabled to all Dubsado Payments users, regardless of whether surcharging is turned on.

Reminder: if you previously had receipts turned on in Stripe, be sure to turn them off so your clients are not getting duplicated receipts. You can adjust that by heading to your Stripe settings, click Business > Customer emails settings and toggle off receipts.

Start optimizing your payment process today with Dubsado’s new surcharging feature. Be sure to head into your payment settings to set up! Click here to begin.

🙋‍♀️ Does surcharging not work for you?

Note: We understand that surcharging might not work for everyone and all business types, or may even not be available in your location. Feel free to take a look at our article about pricing your services to take into account processing fees here.