Payments

AwardKit collects entry fees through Stripe Connect. Entry fees are paid straight into your organization's Stripe account. AwardKit never holds the money.

How it works

1. You connect your Stripe account to your organization once (see Stripe Connect setup).
2. You price a program on its Fees page: a standard fee, per-category fees, early-bird and late periods, member and non-member pricing, an automatic multi-entry discount, discount codes, and a declared tax rate (see Entry fees).
3. An entrant submits and either pays right away through Stripe Checkout or chooses Pay later, add more entries, which puts the fee on their balance.
4. The fee lands in your Stripe balance with no commission taken by AwardKit.
5. Refunds happen in your Stripe Dashboard, and the entry updates on its own.

The entry balance

Entrants do not check out once per entry. Each paid submission completes on the spot and its fee joins a running balance; one itemized Stripe checkout then settles every unpaid entry at once, with the multi-entry discount counted across the whole balance. Payment is due before entries close. Unpaid entries stay visible to you as Unpaid with the amount owed, and to the entrant on the program page and in the navbar. See Paying entry fees for the entrant's side.

Which payment methods entrants can use

Checkout offers whatever payment methods your connected Stripe account has enabled for the currency: cards and wallets, plus local methods such as iDEAL, SEPA Direct Debit, or bank transfer where you have turned them on. Manage that list in your Stripe Dashboard under payment methods. Some methods, such as bank transfer, take a few days to confirm: the entrant's entry page shows Payment processing until it clears (it shows as Unpaid in your Entries table), then Paid.

What AwardKit charges

For payment processing: $0. AwardKit takes zero commission on entry fees. You pay only the AwardKit subscription (see billing).

What Stripe charges

Stripe charges its standard processing fees on every transaction (for US accounts, 2.9% + $0.30 per successful card charge; other regions and methods have their own rates on Stripe's pricing page). Those fees come out of each entry fee and are paid to Stripe directly.

Payment statuses

The Entries table shows a payment badge on each paid entry, kept in sync with Stripe:

The entry detail sheet's Payment block shows the amount, the pricing Tier (period), the entrant type under Declared as, any Discount, the Paid date, and the Stripe ref. The entries CSV export adds Payment Status (Paid, Unpaid, Failed or Refunded, as in the Entries table), Net Amount, Tax Rate, Tax Amount, Gross Amount, Currency, Paid At, Discount Code, and Stripe Payment ID for every entry.

Failed and abandoned payments

• Abandoned or expired checkout: the entry goes back on the entrant's balance as Unpaid. Nothing is lost; the entrant pays from their entry page or the balance banner at the current price. If the checkout used a discount code, the entry shows Failed instead and the entrant restarts payment.
• Delayed method fails (for example a bank transfer that never arrives): the entry returns to the balance and the entrant receives "Payment failed for {program}: {amount} still due".
• Reminders: an entrant who leaves checkout without paying, and without a discount code, gets one reminder about an hour later. Entrants with an unpaid balance get a reminder in the last three days before entries close.

There is no organizer action that marks an entry paid or waives its fee; payment status only changes through checkout and Stripe. If you want to let someone in free, set a free entrant type or a $0 category before they submit, or refund in Stripe afterwards.

Refunding an entry fee

There is no refund button in AwardKit. To refund:

1. Open the Stripe Dashboard for your connected account (Settings > Payments and the program's Fees > Payouts both link to it; each payment listed under Payouts also opens in Stripe).
2. Find the payment by entrant email, program name, or amount.
3. Click Refund and confirm.

For a full refund, AwardKit marks the entry Refunded within seconds and emails the payer "Refund processed for {program}: {amount}". The entry itself stays in the program; delete it from Entries if it should also be withdrawn. If Stripe later cancels or fails the refund, the entry goes back to Paid.

Partial refunds leave the entry Paid and are not tracked in AwardKit: you kept part of the fee and the submission remains valid. Keep the note in Stripe.

Refunds reach the entrant's card in 5 to 10 business days, on Stripe's and the bank's timeline.

Disputes (chargebacks)

Stripe emails you about disputes. Handle them in your Stripe Dashboard. The entry stays Paid in AwardKit whatever the outcome.

To reduce dispute risk: set a statement descriptor in Stripe that includes your organization's name (Stripe Dashboard > Settings > Public details), keep your program page clearly branded, and honor refund requests promptly. Most disputes are escalations of a refund request that went unanswered.

Emails around a payment

AwardKit sends these emails itself, from your program's name:

Stripe's own receipts are separate and controlled in your Stripe settings.

When an entrant asks you to resend their invoice, open the entry under Entries: the Payment section has View invoice (or View receipt) and Resend receipt, which asks "Send the receipt again?", naming the email it goes to, then emails the receipt again to the person who paid. View invoice appears when the payment included tax, View receipt otherwise. Entrants can open their invoice anytime from their entry page.

Tax

If your organization is tax-registered (VAT, GST, sales tax), add it on the program under Fees > Tax: click Add tax registration and choose what you collect. For One tax rate, enter the Tax name and Rate and choose under How it applies whether it is Added on top of the fee or Included in the fee. For Tax by location (Canada), add each tax with its registration number; AwardKit taxes each entrant for their province or territory at the rate it supplies for each one. The rate shows next to every price entrants see, checkout charges the right total, discounts apply before tax, and the invoice carries your registration numbers so business entrants can reclaim input tax. See Entry fees for the details.

The decisions stay yours: whether you must charge tax, which rate, and remitting what you collect. AwardKit records what you declare and is not tax advice. Your accountant gets the numbers from the entries CSV export, which breaks out net, tax rate, tax amount, and gross per payment.

AwardKit charges the rate you declare and does not use Stripe Tax, so Stripe Tax reports leave out entry fees. Use the CSV export.

Reporting

• AwardKit's CSV export of the Entries table: payment status, net, tax, and gross, the paid date, and the Stripe payment ID per entry.
• Export CSV on Fees > Payouts: one row per payment for this program, with the paid date (in your program's timezone, like the entries CSV), payer, entries covered, net, tax, gross, and Stripe payment ID.
• Stripe Dashboard: the authoritative record of gross volume, processing fees, payouts, disputes, and refunds. Each payment is labeled "Entry fee: {program name}", so you can find one program's entry fees among your other Stripe payments.

For filings, Stripe is the source of truth; AwardKit's export is the entry-level view.

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