How to Choose Between One-Time Charges and One-Off Member/Household Wallet Invoicing

Now that your invoicing-and-payments toolkit includes One-Time Charges as well as one-off invoices (created through Member and Household Wallets), how do you choose between these two alternatives to conventional invoicing through Dues & Fees? The answer depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

First, let’s stack up these two methods side by side and see how they compare.

One-Time Charges	One-off invoices
Accept payments from non-Members and from people who are not logged in (e.g., sponsor payments from outsiders)	Only available for Members and can be set up to require login to make payment
Accept payments with credit/debit cards, ACH, or Wallet balance funds (from either Member or Household Wallets)	Accept payments with credit/debit cards, ACH, or Wallet balance funds, but the Wallet used must match the type of invoice (Member or Household)
Can be set up without a specific payment amount (to accommodate flexible payment of amounts that vary for individual Members, such as water or cable bills, carryover balances with or without special late fees, etc.)	Must be set up to bill a specific amount
Do not generate invoices; rather, OTCs are available for non-recurring and/or on-demand use	Generate individual, non-recurring invoices
Can be set up to allow payment for multiple instances of a specific item (e.g., multiple pool passes paid for at the same time)	Only accommodate a single obligation or a lump-sum amount due
Must be set up on and attached to a specific website page template to appear on the public website; automatically appear on the Member Portal and mobile app	Automatically show up on the public website’s payments page (which does rely on a specific template), and on the payments areas of the Member Portal and mobile app
Can be set up to collect transaction processing fees from the payor	Can be set up to collect transaction processing fees from the payor
Can be set up to collect sales tax from the payor	No explicit sales tax option; if sales tax is to be collected, it must be included in the amount billed rather than itemized separately via a setup option
Do not have due dates, and therefore do not accommodate flat or interest-based late fees	Can be set up to include one or more flat and/or interest-based late fees, which can recur and which the Admin can waive if necessary
Set up in the Admin Dashboard at Payments > One-Time Charges; not directed at any specific individual, so no importable data or CSV file	Can be set up by importing payor information and amounts through a CSV file
Remain available to accept payments for as long as they are attached online and active	Only issue a single one-time invoice, and do not recur
Do not issue invoices or become obligations attached to any specific person(s), so they technically are not “due” in the sense of an invoiced item	Issue an invoice that remains due until paid online, marked paid through the Admin Dashboard, or voided

As you can see from this comparison, the choice between OTCs and one-off Wallet invoices depends on whether you want—

• To generate invoicing for specific or for variable amounts
• To make a payment option available to outsiders or only to logged-in Members
• To enable greater payment-option flexibility or to restrict payment options
• To accommodate variable payment amounts or require payment of a specific amount
• To accommodate payment for multiple instances of an item or collect payment for a single item
• To automate collection of sales tax on a taxable sale of goods and/or services
• To establish a due date for payment of an obligation or allow for on-demand payment
• To add one or more late fees to an obligation with a specific due date