Collective admins are able to approve refunds for up to 30 days from the date the donation was made, as long as the payment provider supports the transaction. After that point, donations can only be refunded by Fiscal Host admins.
If you are not the admin, contact your fiscal host (or Open Collective support if your host is managed by Open Collective).
Go to the Collective page and head to the Budget section.
Click on the Transactions Tab and then View all transactions.
Find the transaction you want to refund on the list and click on View Details.
You will find a refund button right next to the transaction details.
Click on it and confirm the operation.
Information and instructions for setting up and using 2FA for payouts.
With the implementation of the new , we are currently in the process of updating our documentation and some pages may be out of date. Thank you for your patience. Please our support team if you need any assistance.
Fiscal hosts now have the ability to enable two-factor authentication on payouts. This means that when you go to the host dashboard and click “Go to pay” to open the payment modal, you will sometimes be prompted to enter a 2FA code as an extra layer of security.
First, you need to enable two-factor authentication on your user account. You can find the instructions on how to do this .
Now you’re ready to make payouts from the host dashboard. Click “Go to pay” for the first expense.
The payment modal will then open, giving you the option to pay out for the expense.
For the first expense that you’re paying in a “session”, you will be prompted to enter your 2FA code. Open your authenticator app and enter the 6-digit code that is under the entry for your account on Open Collective.
Then click the pay button in the modal again. If the code is correct, then the payment should go through.
What happens now that you have “authenticated” by putting in your 2FA code is that you are allowed to make any number of payments until the sum of their amounts add up to a limit (which defaults to $10,000.00). When the sum of the amounts of all the payments you’ve made goes over the limit, you are then asked to enter your 2FA code again in order to keep making payments.
If you and another admin/accountant for your organization are making payments at the same time, you each get your own limit instead of working against a shared one.
When you enable 2FA for payouts on your organization, every admin or accountant who makes payments will need to enable 2FA for login on their individual accounts, so please make sure to let them know this before enabling it.
Instructions on how to safely connect to PayPal.
With the implementation of the new Dashboard interface, we are currently in the process of updating our documentation and some pages may be out of date. Thank you for your patience. Please contact our support team if you need any assistance.
There are two ways you can process expenses using PayPal: using PayPal Adaptive Payments or PayPal Payouts.
This feature is not supported for independent collectives. If you are an independent collective we recommend using Wise for payouts.
For hosts that are using PayPal, this integration can be used to automate expense payment by providing a one-click solution for paying expenses using PayPal Payouts.
After connecting your PayPal account, you'll be able to schedule expenses submitted using PayPal as a payout method for mass-payout without needing to reauthorize with PayPal every $2,000 USD. Expenses scheduled for payout also have a higher limit (up to $20,000 per expense) and cheaper fees, you can schedule expenses for payout up to your existing PayPal balance.
The new payment process is asynchronous, meaning that expenses are now scheduled for payout and dealt with by a scheduled worker. This worker runs once every hour, this means that at the turn of the clock we'll bundle the scheduled expenses and pay them in a single request to PayPal.
After being processed by the worker, the expense is marked as in Processing and individually tracked. We'll make sure its status is up-to-date on our platform, bear in mind that in the case the recipient doesn't have a PayPal account, they have up to 30 days to create and accept the payment.
If the payment is successful, the expense is marked as Paid, and in case something goes wrong during this process the expense will be marked as Error so you can try it again or process it manually.
The fees are charged by PayPal and its value will vary with the currencies being and value being transferred. You can read more about it here.
These fees are paid by the collective the expense was submitted for. This means that transactions in PayPal will display the fees but that value will also be deducted from the collective balance in our platform as a payment processor fee.
A PayPal business account with:
Access to PayPal Payouts.
There's a manual request that needs to be filled, more information here.
A confirmed identity, email, and bank account linked to your PayPal business account.
Sufficient funds in your PayPal business account.
Payments should respect the fund amount you have accounted for in the platform.
You can't pay expenses if the budget accounted for the collective is not enough to cover the transfer expenses.
The host is still responsible for managing funds in PayPal.
Expenses are paid with your PayPal Balance.
PayPal Payouts is currently in beta test, if you're interested in testing this feature, please contact us.
If you're already in the beta test group, you can follow these instructions:
Create a new PayPal app
Open PayPal's Developer page and Log In.
In My Apps & Credentials page, select the Live environment, and click in Create app.
Name this App after Open Collective, this way you'll always remember where this token is being used.
App Type: Merchant
Click Create App.
2. In App settings, make sure the following boxes are checked:
Accept payments (if you wish to enable payments with PayPal)
Payouts (if you wish to enable expenses payout with PayPal)
Customer Disputes
Transaction Search
3. Now, copy the necessary information to Open Collective.
Open a new tab and go to Open Collective.
Open your Host collective settings page and click on the Sending Money option in the menu.
Copy and paste Client ID and Secret in the respective fields.
Click Connect PayPal
Done! Next time you pay for an expense submitted with PayPal and you select the automatic method, your expense will be marked as Scheduled for Payment and processed using PayPal Payouts!
In order to reduce risks related to having an active API token that is able to create and fund transactions, we strongly suggest you:
Keep just enough balance in PayPal to pay your expenses.
This can be achieved by calculating the amount needed for the current payment cycle and transferring it beforehand.
PayPal deprecated Adaptive Payments for quite some time already, maintaining this feature has proven to be a challenge and this is why we're also deprecating Adaptive Payments on our side.
Please migrate to PayPal Payouts if you're currently using it as we can no longer guarantee the future operation of this feature.
Adaptive Payments are the easy way and it is automatically enabled for everyone.
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 a 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
Click on the admin button on the top right-hand side of your fiscal host page.
2. Go to your Fiscal host settings
3. Click on Sending money
4. Disable Paypal
Instructions on how to safely connect to Wise, f.k.a. TransferWise.
With the implementation of the new Dashboard interface, we are currently in the process of updating our documentation and some pages may be out of date. Thank you for your patience. Please contact our support team if you need any assistance.
For hosts that are using Wise, this integration can be used to automate expense payment by providing a one-click solution for paying expenses.
After connecting your Wise account, users submitting new expenses will have access to a structured form for providing a valid bank account information and you will be able to pay those expenses automatically with the Pay with Wise button.
The fees are charged by Wise and its value will vary with the currencies and value being transferred. You can read more about Wise fees here.
These fees are paid by the collective the expense was submitted for. This means that transactions in Wise will display the fees but that value will also be deducted from the collective balance in our platform as a payment processor fee.
Payments through Wise require a borderless account.
Payments should respect the fund amount you have accounted for in the platform.
You can't pay expenses if the budget accounted for the collective is not enough to cover the transfer expenses.
The host is still responsible for managing funds in Wise.
Transfers are funded with your host currency.
If your host is using USD, we're funding all your transfers with your USD balance despite the payee currency.
Go to Open Collective.
Click on Connect Wise button;
Now, log in with your business's Owner account and, if requested, select your business profile;
Click on the Give Access button:
Done! Now all your hosted collectives will be able to submit Bank Transfer expenses compatible with TransferWise and you'll be able to pay for it with one click.
Notice that this option will only be available for new expenses. Expenses created before Wise support was added are not structured as required by Wise and will need to be edited or recreated by the payee.
Once you're connected to Wise and you start receiving expenses requesting a bank account transfer, you'll be able to automatically pay that from your main Wise balance with a single click. The Go to Pay button in approved expenses displays the Wise icon and by clicking this button you'll open the Pay expense modal.
In the Pay expense modal you can select if you want to pay it automatically with the integration or pay it manually, effectively marking the expense as paid so you can use any other method you want to settle this expense.
For some accounts (especialy in Europe and UK), Wise will require you to authorize the payment using an One-Time Token sent to you through SMS, Email or the Wise app.
On such case, Pay expense modal displays the Schedule to Pay with Wise button that once clicked marks the expense as Scheduled for Payment. This will allow you to batch multiple expense for payment and authorizing all the payments in a single transaction.
In order for paying for the scheduled expenses, the host admin can find the Pay Batch button on a suspended banner in the expenses page in the host dashboard:
If you click on Pay Batch, a confirmation modal will be displayed and if you click Pay with Wise, all scheduled expenses are going to be batched in a single Wise group transaction.
This batch will be automatically funded after you confirmthe transaction using the one-time token generated by Wise and sent to you.
In order to reduce risks related to having an active API token that is able to create and fund transactions, we strongly suggest you to:
Activate the Two-Step Authentication in Wise.
Keep just enough balance in Wise to pay your expenses.
This can be achieved by calculating the amount needed for the current payment cycle and transferring it beforehand.
Unable to fund transfer
Double-check if you have enough funds in your Wise balance, you'll be using the balance with the same currency of your OpenCollective account.
With the implementation of the new , we are currently in the process of updating our documentation and some pages may be out of date. Thank you for your patience. Please our support team if you need any assistance.
Virtual cards can be offered to collectives through Hosts. Hosts authorise and create virtual cards, assigning them to a Collective administrator. Anyone with access to that card can then use it to make payments on behalf of the Collective.
When a payment is made, an expense is automatically created for the Collective; the owner is then notified to attach a receipt.
Virtual Cards are particularly useful for recurring payments like hosting a website.
Virtual Cards are currently only supported through Open Collective, Open Source Collective (OSC) and Open Collective Europe (OCE). Virtual Cards are not available to other Fiscal Hosts.
Virtual Cards created using Open Collective will authorise transactions against the Collective's balance in real-time. Cards additionally be configures with a number of spending controls to de-risk abuse.
Open Collective uses Stripe Issuing to manage virtual cards. We have extended support for Stripe that enables hosts to create, edit, pause, resume and cancel cards, including the option to automatically pause and resume cards with missing receipts.
Go to the above page, contact the Issuing sales team to get set up with Stripe Virtual Cards.
Stripe Issuing uses an Issuing Balance that is separate from currency balances held within Stripe. Virtual Cards use this balance when processing transactions. Be sure to add to your issuing balance regularly.
To access your virtual card settings and policy, go to your host's admin panel and open select 'Virtual Cards Settings' under your Fiscal Host Settings section:
It is possible to create and assign virtual cards to Collectives without enabling users to request them.
Toggle the 'allow collectives to request a card' option to allow Collectives to request a card. Collectives can request a Virtual Card by clicking Request a card from their profile page:
Hosts are notified of virtual card requests by email.
You can toggle this option to automatically send a reminder for charge expenses that were created but are still missing their receipts. These reminders are sent after 15 and 29 days the expense was created.
Hosts have complete control over when, how, and to who they provide Virtual Cards. Hosts can define their own policy in the 'Virtual Card Policy Information' area.
Virtual card policies are provided to users when requesting a card. They can contain a binding agreement if needed.
You can view all cards assigned to Collectives from the Virtual Cards settings page. Here you can filter cards by Collective:
Each card shows the name, status, assigned collective, when the card was assigned and any limits set. The last four digits of the card are also shown. To view the full details of a card click 'view card details'.
Be aware of your surroundings when viewing a card's details as others may be able to see them.
Select the Collective to assign the card to (this is automatically filled if creating from a Collective's profile page), the assignee, a name for the card and limit:
Card transactions appear in the assigned Collective's expenses.
Expenses that are authorized will debit the collective's balance and appear as PROCESSING until the card is charged, at which time the expense will be marked asPAID. Assignees are able to upload a receipt to expenses that are still processing.
If the authorization is cancelled before there's an actual charge, we simply delete the expense. If the purchase is refunded, a new refund transaction to be added to credit the amount back to the collective and the charge expense will be set to "CANCELED".
Straight to the bank account attached to your Stripe account, which you connect when you set up as an Open Collective fiscal host.
To withdraw funds, people submit receipts or invoices as .
Expenses go through a two-step approval process:
A core contributor (admin) of the individual Collective confirms that the expense is a valid use of funds for their project.
Then the host admin confirms that the expense meets requirements (such as having a valid receipt).
Then the expense can be paid out.
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.
See
If the expense payment method is not already set to "other", edit the expense and change it.
If you've changed the payment method, save and re-approve the expense.
Pay the expense (via PayPal manually, bank transfer, or any other method).
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.
Finally, mark the expense as paid in Open Collective. The amount will be deducted from the Collective budget.
Open your Host collective settings page and click on the Sending Money option in the menu.
Ensure to your account.
Cards can be created from within Open Collective with Stripe Issuing. . Once connected, cards can be created from your Host Settings (Select 'Virtual cards' and 'create card') or from the 'actions' panel on a hosted collective's profile page:
Virtual Cards issued with Stripe can be limited on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis. They can also be limited on a per-transaction basis or assigned a total spending limit (all time). .
Hosts can toggle this option from the if they wish to automatically pause virtual cards after an expense is missing its receipt after 31 days. Cards will resume once all missing expenses are submitted.
Cards issued with Stripe Issuing's details, including 'assignee', name, and spending limits can be edited from the . It is not possible to re-assign a virtual card to another Collective.
Cards issued using Stripe Issuing can also be paused, resumed and cancelled from the . Cards paused, resumed and cancelled directly through Stripe will be synchronised.
TransferWise is still in beta release, so the first thing is to request access to the feature through .
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 to do so.
