Connect Stripe, Square and PayPal

Connect a payment processor so its payouts post to your books and reconcile to your bank:

1. Go to Ledger › Setup › Business.
2. In the Integrations panel, click Connect more.
3. In the Connect integration window pick Stripe or Square, which redirects you to sign in.

You can also start from Ledger › Banking › Accounts: under Payment processors, each processor HQ offers that you have not connected yet has its own Connect button, such as Connect Stripe, Connect Square or Connect PayPal. It is the same connection as in Setup, and it brings you back to Accounts when the processor is done. PayPal opens its steps in a window right there, since it needs no sign-in page.

A connected Square account can also take your clients' card payments on your invoices once you turn that on (see Email an invoice). PayPal connects differently from Stripe; its steps are under PayPal, below.

HQ reads new payouts automatically on every plan, looking back over the last 7 days each time. On the Free plan nothing older than 30 days is brought in, including when you ask it to sync. Moving to a paid plan brings in your payouts from the start of your tax year, by itself.

When it finishes connecting

A window tells you the processor is connected. The first sync has started and can take a few minutes, longer when there is a lot of history. Click Done; its payouts then appear under Ledger › Banking › Payouts, and under Ledger › Banking › Accounts, in Payment processors. The window shows once per connect, including when you reconnect.

When a connection needs reconnecting

If Stripe, PayPal or Square withdraws HQ's access, syncing stops and the processor's row on Ledger › Setup › Business shows a red line saying so, with a Reconnect button beside it. Click it and approve access again. Your synced history is kept. A connection that is only slow or had a temporary problem shows nothing, because HQ retries it by itself.

A disconnected row stays in the list so you can reconnect it. To clear one you no longer need, click the x beside it and confirm. Anything already synced from it stays in your books.

If it is already connected to another HQ account

One account feeds one set of books. If the account you approve is already connected, and still live, on another HQ account, HQ refuses the connection and changes nothing, so its payouts never land in two places. The message says where it is connected without naming anyone else. If it belongs here, disconnect it in that account's Ledger › Setup first, then connect it again here. An account that was disconnected in the other account connects here as usual, and reconnecting it on the account that already holds it is never refused.

How many processors you can connect

On the Free and Solo plans you can connect one payment processor (Stripe, PayPal or Square) per business. Pro, Business and Partner connect as many as you like. The Free plan is for trying HQ on your own business; upgrading lets you bring in every processor your money arrives through.

• The limit counts processors you have connected right now. Disconnect one and it stops counting.
• Reconnecting the account you already have is never blocked, even at the limit. That's how you fix a connection whose access has expired.

If you're at the limit, HQ tells you so when you try to connect.

Stripe: the TALISK_HQ app

Connecting Stripe installs the TALISK_HQ app on your Stripe account. Stripe shows you what it can read before you approve: payouts, balances, the charges, refunds and fees inside each payout, and the invoices, credit notes, Checkout sessions and tax rates that say how much sales tax a charge carried. Every permission is read-only except one: opening a Stripe Checkout page when your client pays one of your invoices by card, so that payment is charged on your own account. HQ cannot move money or change anything else in your Stripe account.

HQ also reads your Stripe subscriptions, for the Subscriptions page. If you installed the app before it asked for that, the Stripe row in Ledger › Setup asks you to approve TALISK_HQ's new permissions in your Stripe Dashboard. You do not need to reconnect, and your payouts keep syncing until you do.

If you sign in to more than one Stripe account, Stripe asks which one to connect. Pick the account your customers pay into.

Installing from the Stripe App Marketplace

If you found TALISK_HQ in the Stripe App Marketplace, sign in to TALISK_HQ and follow the steps at the top of this page: Ledger › Setup › Business, then Connect more, then Stripe. Connecting from inside HQ is what tells it which business's books your Stripe payouts belong in.

If Stripe sends you to HQ straight after you approve the app, nothing is connected yet. HQ asks you to Sign in to TALISK_HQ (or Connect Stripe if you are already signed in), which opens the Connect integration window for the business you are working in. Pick Stripe there to finish.

The connection renews itself in the background, so it keeps syncing without you signing in again. If Stripe ever refuses to renew it, a banner at the top of HQ asks you to Reconnect.

You can also remove the app from the installed apps in your Stripe Dashboard. HQ stops syncing by its next sync at the latest and asks you to reconnect; the payouts already in your books stay. Connect again from Ledger › Setup to start syncing again.

For Stripe, settled payouts then post to your ledger and match your bank deposits automatically, and you'll see them on the Ledger Dashboard and under Ledger › Banking › Payouts. Stripe's own payments, fees and payouts are listed under Ledger › Banking › Accounts, in Payment processors, where every connected processor has its own row: click it to expand its activity: Stripe and Square show every payment, refund and fee as it happens (Square then lists its payouts), and your books record the money when the payout lands. A processor alone doesn't add the Ecommerce section: that's for Shopify and WooCommerce stores.

PayPal

PayPal connects differently from Stripe. There is no sign-in page: you create a small app in your own PayPal account and paste its Client ID and Secret into HQ. The app is yours, it is used only by HQ, and you can delete it in PayPal at any time to cut HQ off. HQ's PayPal connect window walks you through it one screen at a time, with a picture of the PayPal page each step happens on, and Open PayPal's developer site takes you straight to PayPal's Live apps.

1. In the PayPal Developer Dashboard, switch from Sandbox to Live (the Dashboard opens on Sandbox), then create an app just for HQ. Sandbox credentials are refused: they only work with PayPal's test accounts.

2. Open the app, scroll to Features, and untick everything except Transaction search. Then click Save Changes. HQ only reads your PayPal history, and the other features (Payouts especially) let whoever holds the app's keys move money.

3. Copy the app's Client ID and Secret.

4. In HQ click Connect PayPal under Ledger › Banking › Accounts › Payment processors (or, in Ledger › Setup › Business, Connect more then PayPal), and paste both.

5. Choose where PayPal history starts in HQ:

   • The start of your open books (recommended): the day your books start, or the day after the last period you locked or filed a GST/HST, QST or PST return for, whichever is later. A closed period is never changed.
   • Today: only PayPal activity from now on.
   • A date between them.

   HQ reads at most three years back, which is all PayPal keeps.

If Transaction search is not ticked, HQ refuses the connection and says so. PayPal can take a few minutes to start honouring the change, so wait a moment and try again. HQ only reads: it cannot send money or change anything in your PayPal account.

Connecting PayPal adds a PayPal account under Ledger › Banking › Accounts. Your PayPal balance lives there, checked against PayPal's own figure, with PayPal's sales listed by day. PayPal is not listed under Payment processors: it is an account, not a processor whose payouts are matched to deposits. See PayPal in Banking for what posts and what waits for you.

Connecting from the desktop app

Stripe opens its sign-in in your normal web browser rather than inside the HQ window, so your saved password is available. Approve there and the desktop app comes back to the front with the account connected.

You do not need to sign in to HQ in that browser. It only hands your approval back to the app, and the app finishes the connection with your own HQ sign-in, so a link someone else sends you cannot connect their account to your business.

An older copy of the desktop app finishes in the browser instead. If that browser reaches the internet a different way from the app (a VPN, or iCloud Private Relay in Safari), the confirmation page asks you to sign in to HQ there with the same account you use in the app. Updating the app removes that step.

Disconnecting

You can withdraw HQ's access whenever you like:

1. Go to Ledger › Setup › Business.
2. Find the connection in the Integrations panel.
3. Click Disconnect beside it, then choose what to do with the saved connection.

Either way HQ stops syncing and can no longer read the account, and nothing already in your books is removed: the orders, customers and payouts synced so far are kept, and every journal entry stays exactly as posted. Those are your accounting records, and you need to keep them.

The two answers differ only in what happens to the saved connection:

• Disconnect keeps it, so reconnecting later is one click.
• Disconnect and delete credentials removes the saved key as well, so reconnecting means approving again at the provider. Choose this if you are leaving, or if you think the key may have been exposed.

Keeping it is the default on purpose: a provider can refuse to re-authorize for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and a disconnect you cannot undo is worse than one you can. Neither answer touches your sales history.

Once it is disconnected the row says Disconnected and offers Reconnect instead.

Disconnecting PayPal keeps the PayPal account in Banking and everything posted to it, the same way the other connections keep their history. Reconnecting the same PayPal account later, even through a new PayPal app or after deleting the old connection, picks the same account back up, along with any PayPal days that were still waiting to post.

One PayPal account is one account in HQ. If you connect a second PayPal app that reads a PayPal account HQ already reads, or HQ cannot tell whether it is the same account, the new connection reads nothing and its row in Settings › Integrations says why, naming the account in Banking. Disconnect one of the two, or reconnect with the app that fed that account.

If Square keeps sending payments

After you disconnect Square, HQ keeps the payments, refunds and payouts Square sends it, and they reach your books when you reconnect. A client's card payment on one of your invoices is the exception: it still completes and is recorded on the invoice straight away. HQ does not keep Square's customer details in that time.

About two weeks before HQ would stop, it tells you on the Books Health panel and by email, with the date: reconnect before that date, or HQ stops keeping what Square sends. The date is 60 days after you disconnected, and never less than two weeks after that notice. After it, a card payment on an invoice waits there for you to confirm. Square sends these notifications to HQ's app as a whole, so to stop them remove TALISK_HQ from the apps connected to your Square account in the Square Dashboard.

A disconnected Stripe account works differently today: HQ stops recording its card payments the day you disconnect it, so a client who pays an invoice through it afterwards shows as a payment waiting on the invoice for you to confirm.