Payments FAQ for Fiscal Host Admins

Where does the money contributed to Collectives we fiscally host go?

Straight to the bank account attached to your Stripe account, which you connect when you set up as an Open Collective fiscal host.

How do people withdraw funds from Collectives we host?

To withdraw funds, people submit receipts or invoices as Expenses.

Expenses go through a two-step approval process:

1. A core contributor (admin) of the individual Collective confirms that the expense is a valid use of funds for their project.

2. Then the host admin confirms that the expense meets requirements (such as having a valid receipt).

Then the expense can be paid out.

What payment methods do you support for withdrawals?

Right now, we only support PayPal and TransferWise for one-click payouts through the platform. You can manually record any money that you receive or send outside of the Open Collective platform (e.g. bank transfer, cryptocurrency, cash, etc). In the future, we hope to build other payout methods into the platform.

How do I pay out Expenses with PayPal?

From your host dashboard you can connect your PayPal account and pre-approve up to $2,000 USD in payouts. Make sure that you are connecting the PayPal account connected to the same bank account as your Stripe account.

On the host dashboard, expenses that have been approved and have sufficient budget will show a "pay" button. With just one click you can pay the expense. After paying out $2,000, you'll need to re-authorize with PayPal (this is a security feature).

For single payments larger than $2,000, make a manual payment.

How do I pay out Expenses with TransferWise?

TransferWise is still in beta release so the first thing is to request access to the feature through [email protected]

After getting access to the feature, you'll be able to connect to your TransferWise account through the Connected Accounts menu in your settings. You can follow these instructions to do so.

How can I make manual payments?

1. If the expense payment method is not already set to "other", edit the expense and change it.

2. If you've changed the payment method, save and re-approve the expense.

3. Pay the expense (via PayPal manually, bank transfer, or any other method).

4. If there are payment processor fees or you have a policy of charging an extra fee for manual payments, you add those amounts in the boxes provided.

5. Finally, mark the expense as paid in Open Collective. The amount will be deducted from the Collective budget.