Any form that collects money can let a registrant choose how they pay: pay online right away, or pay in person at the event. When a registrant chooses to pay at the door, no card is collected at submission. Instead, they receive a QR code by email, and a staff member scans it at the event to pull up what is owed and collect the payment.
Tip: The QR code does not let registrants pay themselves. It is a shortcut for your staff to instantly find the right registration and collect on it, like a ticket the staff scans rather than a self-checkout.
You will need the Full Write Forms permission to turn on Pay at the Door for a form, and the Accept Payment permission to collect a payment at the door.
To take card payments at the door, Square must be connected to your account. Recording cash or check does not require it. To set up Square for card payments, see How does the Square integration work?
How it works at a glance
You turn on Allow Pay at the Door for a specific form. Connecting Square is optional, and only needed to take card payments at the door.
A registrant fills out the form, sees a required Payment choice, and selects Pay at the Door. No card is taken.
The registrant is emailed a QR code along with the amount due.
At the event, a staff member scans that QR code with their phone's normal camera, which opens the registration's door page. Staff must be logged in with the right permission.
Staff collect the payment by charging a card, sending the bill to a Square Terminal, or recording cash or check.
The balance updates to paid automatically, and the money posts as a contribution in One Church Software.
Turning on Pay at the Door for a form
You will need the Write Forms permission to perform this action.
The form must collect money first. A form accepts payment by having Donation fields and/or Item/Ticket fields on it. There is no separate switch to enable payments. For help building a form that takes money, see How do I take donations through a form?
Open the form and select the Settings tab, then Payments.
Turn on Allow Pay at the Door.
Optionally, fill in the Pay at the Door Message. This free text is shown to anyone who chooses to pay at the door, for example "Please bring exact change or a card to the welcome table."
Tip: Pay-at-the-door registrations are never charged processing fees, because no card is collected at submission. The door amount is the plain total.
What the registrant sees
The Pay at the Door choice appears to a registrant only when all three of these are true:
The form has Allow Pay at the Door turned on, and
The order total is greater than $0, and
There is no recurring gift in the cart. A recurring donation must be paid now and hides the door option.
When the choice is available, a required Payment selection appears below the order summary with two options:
Pay Now - the default. Selecting it shows the normal card and bank-transfer entry fields.
Pay at the Door - selecting it hides all card fields and shows your church's pay-at-the-door message, if one was set.
The agreement line above the submit button updates to match the choice. For a pay-at-the-door selection it reads: "By submitting this form you agree to pay {amount} at the door." After the registrant submits, the success screen reads: "We've emailed you a code to pay at the door. Check your inbox." The amount owed is saved on the registration as a balance due, split across the funds and items they registered for.
The email and QR code
After a pay-at-the-door submission, the registrant receives an email containing their code to pay at the door. The confirmation email shows an amber "Payment not yet received" banner, the amount due, your church's custom message, and a scannable QR code with a plain-text link as a backup. If the form has no active confirmation email, a dedicated pay-at-the-door email is sent instead, so the registrant always receives the QR code.
Your staff routing address also receives a short notification that reads "Payment: Will pay at the door," along with the amount due. A paid-in-full registration instead shows a green "Paid in full" banner to the registrant and a "Payment: Paid in full" note to staff.
Tip: The QR code contains only a link to the staff door page for that one registration, with no personal or payment information, which is why it is safe to email. Opening it requires a logged-in staff member with the right permission. A member of the public who opens the link cannot see or do anything.
Collecting payment at the door
A staff member needs the Accept Payment permission to open the door page and collect a payment.
Open the registration
A staff member scans the registrant's emailed QR code with their phone's normal camera app, or opens the link directly. There is no special scanner app and no in-app scanner. Any camera that reads QR codes works. The link opens the door page for that registration. The door page requires a One Church Software login with the Accept Payment permission. Without it, the staff member is sent to the forms list. The registrant cannot use this page to pay.
Read the balance
The door page shows the registrant's name and email, the event and guests if it is event-linked, the line items, and a money block listing Amount due, Amount paid, and Balance, with a status pill of either Paid or Balance due. If the registration is already settled, it shows "This entry is paid in full" and no payment controls.
Collect the payment
When a balance remains, the Collect payment section offers up to three methods. Charging a card or sending to a Square Terminal requires Square to be connected. Recording cash or check does not.
Charge card - hands off to the Square Point of Sale app on the staff phone to take a card-present payment by Tap to Pay or an attached Square Reader. After the card is taken in Square, the page updates the balance. This button appears only on a phone or tablet. On a desktop it is replaced by a hint to open the page on the phone running Square Point of Sale.
Send to terminal - for churches with a standalone Square Terminal device. Pick the terminal from the dropdown and the bill appears on the device for the customer to pay. A terminal must be paired first in your Square options.
Record cash/check payment - opens a small form to log a cash or check payment by hand. The amount defaults to the balance, with an optional note. No hardware or Square connection is needed.
Tip: When any payment is taken, the door page updates the balance and flips to Paid automatically, with no manual refresh. Card payments usually reflect within a few seconds.
Finding who still owes
Two places show outstanding pay-at-the-door balances.
The form entries list
Open a form's entries. The Payments column shows, for each registration, either {paid} / {due} with a red Payment Due pill if money is still owed, or a green check and the amount if fully paid. This column is filterable and sortable, so you can quickly pull a list of everyone who has not paid. A Record payment row action also appears on entries with an outstanding balance.
Inside a single registration
Open the entry and select the Payments tab. It shows Amount due, Amount paid, and Remaining, the list of transactions, and a Record Payment button while a balance remains.
Permissions: who can do what
Accept Payment - open the door page and collect a payment at the door. This is a deliberately low-bar permission, so door volunteers can take payments without full forms or financial access.
Write Forms - build the form and turn on Allow Pay at the Door.
Financial Settings - connect and configure Square, which is needed only for card payments at the door.
Anyone who has Limited Write Forms or Write Forms automatically has Accept Payment as well. The standalone permission exists so you can grant a door volunteer only the ability to take door payments, and nothing else.
Why a card balance is usually instant
When staff charge a card at the door, Square notifies One Church Software within seconds and the door page flips to paid right away. As a backup, a sync runs every hour as a safety net, so even if the instant notification is delayed, the payment reconciles within the hour. The hourly sync is skipped during Sunday-morning service times to keep check-in fast. Cash and check payments are recorded right away and do not depend on this sync.
Things to keep in mind
Recording a payment by hand at the door is for cash or check only. Card payments go through Square.
Recurring gifts cannot be paid at the door. They are pay-now only.
Turning off Allow Pay at the Door affects only new submissions. Registrations that already owe a balance can still be collected against.
Warning: In rare cases, a card payment taken at the door may not match back to its registration automatically, for example if the registration was deleted. If a card was clearly charged in Square but the balance has not cleared after the hourly sync, contact our support team with the Square payment details and the form entry rather than charging the card again.