SalesThumb routes customer card payments through a payout account you connect once, and gives you a dedicated queue for chargebacks and refund requests. Here's how the money moves and what to do when a customer disputes a charge.
How payouts work
Connect your payout account at Settings → Payments. Once it's approved, customer card payments settle to that account on your payment processor's standard deposit schedule — SalesThumb doesn't add its own hold or delay on top. Card and PayPal payments deposit the next business day; ACH payments take four business days. See When will I get paid? for the full timing breakdown.
There's no self-serve payout-schedule toggle (daily vs. weekly) inside SalesThumb today — the timing above is standard for every shop. For exact deposit timing on a given charge, check Reports → Deposits.
The fees
Your all-in card-processing rate — interchange, network assessments, processor markup, and SalesThumb's cut, bundled into one number — is shown at Settings → Payments before you connect a payout account. It's tier-based: higher plan tiers get a lower base rate (for example, Starter is 2.99% + $0.30 per tap; Growth is 2.89% + $0.25; Pro is 2.79% + $0.20). Cross a trailing-30-day volume threshold of $100,000 and you start earning a 0.15% rebate on the excess volume. As of today, issuing that rebate is a manual step on our side, not an automatic invoice credit — ask if you think you've earned one and haven't seen it applied.
SalesThumb doesn't add a separate platform fee on top of that rate — its cut is baked into the single number you see, not stacked as a second line item.
That rate is also already netted out of your deposit rather than billed to you separately — there's no follow-up invoice for processing fees. A $100 charge at, say, 3% + $0.30 shows up in your deposit as $96.70; the $3.30 never leaves your account in the first place. If a deposit ever looks smaller than what you charged, this is why — check the math against your rate before assuming something's wrong.
ACH / bank transfer isn't available as a live self-serve checkout option yet. Card is the primary online method today; cash, check, and ACH payments a customer pays you directly are all recorded manually.
Processing fees in QBO
The QuickBooks integration pushes paid invoices one-way; it does not post processing fees to QuickBooks for you. Record processing fees in QuickBooks the way you normally would — your bank feed shows the fee on each deposit.
Disputes (chargebacks)
A chargeback happens when a customer's bank reverses a charge — usually because the customer claims they didn't receive what they paid for. When your processor reports one, SalesThumb automatically opens it in your queue at Disputes so your team has something to triage right away.
Customers can also file a refund request directly from their public invoice/pay page — either your staff opens one from an invoice, or the customer submits one themselves. Refund requests run through the same queue as chargebacks, just without a bank-set deadline.
Each dispute moves through a lifecycle: Needs response → Gathering evidence → Ready to submit → Submitted → Won / Lost (or Accepted, if you choose to refund instead of contest it). When your processor supplies a response deadline for a chargeback, it shows on the dispute as "evidence due" — not every chargeback carries one, so check the dispute itself rather than assuming a fixed number of days.
A chargeback itself can move through two phases, and it matters which one you're in. During the inquiry phase, the customer's bank is investigating and the funds stay with you while you submit evidence — nothing's been taken yet. If it escalates to the dispute phase, the funds are pulled back from you until the bank makes a final call. If you already responded to an inquiry and then see money disappear, that's usually this escalation, not a new issue. Banks can open a chargeback up to 180 days after the original charge.
Step 1 — Gather evidence
Open the dispute and use the evidence checklist. SalesThumb can pull together, from what's already on file for that customer:
- Invoice with line items
- The approved quote, with signature
- Tint compliance waivers
- The service appointment and its timestamps
- Before/after job photos
- SMS and email correspondence
- Warranty registration
- Signed QC inspection
- The internal audit log for that customer
Click "AI · Suggest evidence pack" and it looks at what's actually on file for that customer, recommends which sections to include based on the chargeback's reason code, and drafts a short cover note arguing your case — one click to apply, then adjust anything you'd write differently.
Step 2 — Add your written narrative
Use the "Cover-page notes" field for a short, factual rebuttal: what service was performed, on what date, at what price, and any evidence that contradicts the dispute reason. The AI suggestion drafts a starting point — treat it as a draft, not a final answer.
Step 3 — Submit
Click "Download evidence pack PDF" and SalesThumb assembles your selected evidence into a single PDF. Submitting it is a manual step on your side — your processor's own dispute-response portal is where that PDF actually gets filed against the chargeback. Decision timelines and outcomes are set by the card network and your processor, not SalesThumb.
Your dispute queue shows your own shop's win rate (won ÷ decided) so you can track how you're doing over time — SalesThumb doesn't publish an industry benchmark to compare it against.
Dispute prevention
The best dispute is the one that never happens. Best practices:
- Collect a deposit at booking (locks in commitment)
- Get a signed QC sign-off when the job's done — the same "Signed QC inspection" evidence type disputes pull from
- Capture before/after photos at the standard sequence
- Keep a real SMS/email correspondence trail with the customer
- Register the warranty and email the certificate to the customer — see How to create a warranty tier
None of this guarantees you'll never see a chargeback — but it's what gives the evidence pack something real to work with when one does land.