Thinkific Payments: Managing Student Payments

With Thinkific Payments, you can view and manage student payments directly from your Thinkific Admin Dashboard.

As of May 19th 2022, all new Creators located in Canada or the USA who sign up for Free and Basic plans will have Thinkific Payments set as their default payment processor. Learn more about this update: Thinkific Payments Updates: What to Know

About This Feature

We know that generating sales is a crucial aspect of growing your business. We also know that time spent on payments is time not spent teaching. That’s why we’ve launched Thinkific Payments - to help you sell more courses and spend less time doing it!

As part of Thinkific Payments, our new built-in checkout is regularly tested and optimized to help maximize conversions. As well, order tracking, refunds, and payouts are now built right into Thinkific.

How It Works

Thinkific Payments allows you to accept payment from students through Thinkific's Built in Checkout, without connecting with a third-party payment provider. In the past, our built-in checkout required you to connect with Stripe or Paypal to process payments. Now with Thinkific Payments, all you need is a Thinkific account and a bank account to start selling your courses.

Once you've set up your Thinkific Payments account and set your course pricing, you can start managing new student payments directly from your Thinkific Admin Dashboard.

Important Considerations

If you previously used Stripe or PayPal to process payments on Thinkific, you can log into your Stripe or PayPal account for records of any student payments that were processed before signing up for Thinkific Payments.
Only the Site Owner can set up or make changes to a Thinkific site's Thinkific Payments account.

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Managing Student Payments

Recurring student payments for subscriptions and payment plans can be viewed in the Orders Report and Users tabs of your Admin Dashboard.

To review an individual student's payments for subscriptions and payment plans:

Click Support Your Students in the navigation menu on the left-hand side of your Admin Dashboard
Select Users
In the Users table click on a student's Full Name to view their profile
Select the Payments tab

The Payments tab will only appear in a user's profile if they have purchased a subscription or payment plan using Thinkific Payments.

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The Payments Table

Once you navigate to the Payments tab in your student's profile, you will see all of their subscription and payment plans that were purchased through Thinkific Payments:

This table shows:

Product - The title of the course or bundle
Status - The payment status of the subscription or payment plan (see below for more information)
Price - The price of the subscription or payment plan. If you have set up a custom first payment for subscription pricing, this value will also appear in the Price column
Created - The date and time (in your timezone) the subscription or payment plan was purchased
Last updated/payment - The date and time (in your timezone) of the most recent payment for a subscription or payment plan
Canceled date - The date and time (in your timezone) a subscription or payment plan was canceled

Subscriptions and payment plans can have the following statuses:

Active - Recurring payments are ongoing, the student is up-to-date on payments and has access to the course or bundle
Canceled - Recurring payments have been canceled, and the student does not have access to the course or bundle. This status is displayed when either the student or creator cancels the recurring payments (see below for more information)
Past due - A payment for a subscription or payment plan failed. The student does not have access to the course or bundle (see below for more information)
Closed - This status is for payment plans only and is displayed when all payments have been made. The student will have access to the course or bundle until the enrollment expiry date

Managing Multiple Student Payments from the Orders Table

To review multiple students' orders check out the Orders table in the Orders Report. This table displays all of your students' orders made through Thinkific's Built in Checkout - including orders processed through Thinkific Payments.

Once you've set up Thinkific Payments for your Thinkific site, this table will also include orders for free courses and bundles.

Fees and Providers in the Orders Table

The Orders table will also include a Fees column that shows the total fees for each order. This is a total amount which may include several different fees, and may be different depending on which payment processor handled that particular transaction.

For more information about fees charged by Thinkific Payments, see our article on What fees do I pay with Thinkific? If you're not sure which orders were processed through Thinkific Payments, see our article: Did my student's purchase go through Thinkific Payments, Stripe, or PayPal?

The Fees and Providers columns will also be included when you Export the Transaction Reports.

More Actions for Student Payments

From the Payments tab of your Users section, you can take a variety of additional actions to assist your students, including:

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Frequently Asked Questions

When refunding a student, do I receive a refund for processing or transaction fees?

There are no fees to refund a charge, but the fees from the original charge are not returned. This is true for full and partial refunds.

Do my students need to be located within the USA and Canada for me to use Thinkific Payments?

Thinkific Payments is currently only available to Creators based in the USA and Canada, however, students do not have to be located in the USA or Canada to purchase courses from Creators using Thinkific Payments.

How do my students get receipts?

Thinkific Order Receipts will send automatically - when enabled - for orders made through Thinkific's Built in Checkout, including payments processed through Thinkific Payments. For more information about automatic order receipts and how to enable them, check out our article: Student Order Receipts and Payment Notifications.

Students can view their Order History from their Student Account and Profile. Students also have the option to print order summaries from this area of their account.