Payment Methods

What it is

Payment Methods is a short list of the ways money reaches your business: cash, a card, a check, Zelle, a bank transfer — whatever you actually take. You open it from Settings›Quotes & Docs›Payment Methods.

Each method carries one extra piece of information that most people miss on the first read: Collected By. It answers "when a customer pays this way, whose pocket does the money land in first — the company's, or the field worker's?" Joby uses that answer to decide which way the money is owed on your Commission Report. The page says this at the top: the Collected By setting determines the default balance direction in commission reports.

Three methods are created for you automatically the very first time the page loads, so the list is never truly empty. They are marked with a grey System badge and a small padlock, and they cannot be renamed or deleted.

Anything else you take money by — Check, Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, Bank Transfer — you add yourself, and those you can rename, re-point and delete freely.

When to use it

• Setting the business up. Before your team starts recording money against jobs, make the list match how you really get paid.
• You started taking a new kind of payment. A customer wants to send Zelle and there is no Zelle option in the drop-down on the job.
• The Commission Report balance looks backwards. It says a field worker owes you when in fact you owe them (or the other way round). Nine times out of ten the method's Collected By is set to the wrong side.
• You want a different method pre-selected. The one marked Default is the one that fills in on new jobs and the one the quick Add Payment ($) box uses.
• Tidying up. Removing a method you set up once and never used.

This is not the page for two jobs people often bring here:

• Turning on card payments, seeing money that arrived, or issuing a refund — that is the Payments page in the left menu.
• Choosing which cards, wallets or bank options a customer is offered at checkout — that is a differently-named screen: Payments›Payment methods tab. Confusing the two is the single most common mix-up with this feature.

Before you start

• Do not create your own card method. Both cases are already covered — Credit Card for payments the customer makes online, and Credit Card (Manual) for a card you ran yourself. A third, home-made "Card" method just splits your reporting in two.
• There is no on/off switch on this page. The Status column shows Active for everything you add. If you stop using a method, delete it rather than looking for a toggle.

Step-by-step

Open the page

1. Click Settings in the left menu. (In the newer sidebar, click your name and email at the bottom of the menu, then Settings.)
2. Scroll to the Quotes & Docs group and click the Payment Methods card — the one described as "Accepted payment methods on estimates". Faster: type payment into the Search settings… box at the top of the Settings page and the card is the only thing left.
3. The page opens with the heading Payment Methods and one table: Name, Collected By, Default, Status and Actions.

If this is the first visit, the three built-in methods are created while the page loads, so the table already has rows in it. If you do see the line "No payment methods yet. They will be auto-created when you first load this page.", refresh the page once.

Add a payment method

1. Click Add Payment Method at the top right of the Payment Methods card.
2. The Add New Payment Method window opens with two fields and nothing else to get wrong.
3. Fill in Name *. This is what your team will pick from the drop-down on a job, so write it the way they say it out loud. The box suggests e.g., Zelle, Cash App, Venmo. It is the one required field.
4. Set Default Collected By — either your field worker label or Company. The note underneath spells out what it does: it determines who collects the payment by default, and it can be overridden per job.
5. Click Save. The window closes and the new row appears in the table with Active in the Status column.

Choose which method is the default

1. Find the row you want in the table.
2. In the Default column click Set as Default. That button appears on every row that is not already the default.
3. The grey button is replaced by a coloured Default pill, and the pill disappears from whichever row held it before. Only one method is the default at a time.

The default matters more than it looks. It is pre-filled as the payment method on a new job, and the quick Add Payment ($) box on a job uses it without asking — the note under that box reads "Uses the Default Payment Method. Saves with today's date."

Edit a method you added

1. Click the pencil button in the Actions column at the end of the row. Built-in rows do not have one.
2. The Edit Payment Method window opens with the same two fields, already filled in.
3. Change the Name, the Default Collected By, or both, then click Update.

Delete a method you added

1. Click the bin button in the Actions column. It only shows up on rows that are neither built-in nor the current default.
2. Your browser asks "Are you sure you want to delete this payment method?" — click OK.
3. The row disappears from the table.

No bin on the row you want gone? Either it is a System row (those stay forever), or it is currently the Default — set another method as default first, and the bin appears.

Use a method on a job

1. Open a job and find the Job Financials card. In the quick edit window it is the Payment Method drop-down; on the full job page it is called Default Payment Method.
2. Pick a method. The one marked as your default has a small star (★) next to its name.
3. A line appears underneath reading Collected by: followed by Company or your field worker label. That is the method's setting being copied onto this one job.
4. To record money coming in, type the amount into Add Payment ($) and click Save. It is filed under the default method with today's date, and shows up in the Payments Received list below with the method's name beside it.

To record a payment against a different method than the default, add it and then use the pencil on that row in Payments Received — the edit window has its own Payment method drop-down. Invoices work the same way, with a payment method drop-down on the invoice's payment form.

How to check it worked

• The money side: record a small test payment on a practice job, then open Commission Report. The Payment column should name your method, and the Balance column should point the way you expect.
• The payment record: on the job, the Payments Received list shows the amount, the date, and the method name next to a small card icon.

Common mistakes

• Saving with an empty name. You get "Payment method name is required" and nothing is created. The Name field is the only required one.
• Creating near-duplicates. "Zelle", "zelle" and "Zelle Transfer" are three separate methods and will split your reporting three ways. Agree one spelling with the team before you add it.
• Expecting a rename to rewrite history. Renaming a method updates the Payment column on the Commission Report, but payments already recorded on a job keep the name they were filed under at the time.
• Deleting instead of re-pointing. If a method is simply set to the wrong side, edit it — do not delete and re-create. Deleting loses the link from older jobs that used it.
• Adding a method to hide a job from commissions. Payment methods only describe how money arrived. Who gets paid what is set on the job and on the field worker's record — see Field Workers.