Payments & payouts

Every company connects its own Stripe account to Helprs (a Stripe Connect account you set up under Settings → Payments). Customers pay by card, and Stripe securely processes and moves the money — Helprs never stores card details.

Helprs uses Stripe’s separate charges and transfers model. Rather than dropping each payment straight into your account, funds are collected onto the platform balance and then split — your share to you, each worker’s pay to them — at the right moment in the job’s lifecycle. That’s what lets Helprs pay your team and reconcile your share automatically.

Nothing here is on a fixed schedule waiting to run — each step is triggered by an event as your job moves forward. A payment arrives, a job is completed, a payout finishes; each one advances the money to its next stop.

1. payment.received

   The customer pays

   Stripe processes the card and the funds are held on the Helprs platform balance — collected, but not yet in your account.
2. appointment.completed

   The job is marked completed

   Completion is the trigger. If the job has no workers to pay, your share is released at this point.
3. payout.processed

   The workers are paid

   For staffed jobs, every worker is paid through Helprs or recorded as a manual payment first. This step is skipped when a job has no workers.
4. company-transfer.released

   Your share is released

   Helprs transfers your share — what was collected, minus fees and worker pay — to your connected Stripe account.

Your share is what’s left after the costs of the job:

Your share = amount collected − card processing − platform fee − worker payouts

Card processing is passed through at cost — the exact fee Stripe charges, never an estimate — and the platform fee follows your plan. Customer tips are never touched: they pass through to the worker in full.

Two things gate the release of your share — and which ones apply depends on the job:

1. A job with no workers. As soon as it’s marked completed, there’s no one to pay, so your full share is released right away.
2. A staffed job. The job must be completed and every worker must be paid — through Helprs or recorded as a manual payment — before your share is released. Your share is then transferred net of that worker pay.

Because your share depends on workers being paid, every worker’s pay must be settled and recorded. There are two ways to do it:

1. Through Helprs. Run a payout (or let auto-payouts run) and Helprs sends each worker their pay via Stripe to their connected account. Payouts require confirmed time entries, and every attempt is recorded — success or failure.
2. Manually. Paid a worker in cash or by check outside Helprs? Mark them paid manually so it’s recorded. Manual payments are tracked distinctly and excluded from Stripe reporting, but they still count as “paid” for releasing your share.