Did you know EACH manual transaction costs ~ 10 minutes of monthly administrative time at the average marina?
Impact Compared to Manual Processes
With SharperMMS Auto Payments: under 2 minutes per transaction, plus automated online payments that require zero staff time.
Manual check/cash collection:7–12 minutes per transaction + bank deposit time + accounting reconciliation.
Example: If your team processes 200 manual cash or check payments per month, shifting from ~10 min/tx to Sharper Autopay could save your marina 30+ staff hours/month! (not including bank deposits and reconciliation time)
Why Use Card on File & ACH Auto Payments?
Managing payments efficiently is crucial for both customers and staff. The Sharper MMS payment system allows you to securely save credit card or ACH (bank account) information to a customer’s profile, enabling seamless automatic billing, one-time purchases, and online bill payments. This not only streamlines your receivables process but also enhances customer satisfaction by reducing manual intervention and late payments.
Key Benefits
Convenience: Customers don’t have to re-enter payment details for each transaction.
Automation: Recurring invoices are paid automatically, reducing administrative workload.
Flexibility: Supports both credit card and ACH (bank draft) payments.
Security: Payment data is securely stored and only accessible for authorized billing.
Reduced Delinquency: Automatic payments help ensure invoices are paid on time.
IMPORTANT! Autopay must be selected for customer reservations and invoices. For more details see Setting up Autopay for guidance on setting auto pay as a default.
How Automatic Payments Work in Sharper
Save Payment Methods in SharperMMS:
Via Customer Portal:
Steps to allow customers to enter their own payment methods
Instruct customers to login to the Customer Portal.
Send your customers their portal invitations via the Sending Customer Portal Instruction Guide
Once logged in, on the bottom of the left most column there is a sub section called “Saved Payment Methods” click that.
Click Add New on the top right.
Enter Payment Info for either Credit Card or ACH.
This will automatically make their payment method “Default” unless they toggle the flag off themselves.
Click Save.
In SharperMMS:
Steps to entering customer auto payment methods
Navigate to CRM → Customers.
Search and select the customer.
Go to Payment Settings and click Add New under either Saved Credit Cards or Saved ACH.
Complete all required fields and save the form.
Mark the payment method as Default to enroll the customer in auto pay. Only one default method (either card or ACH) can be active at a time
Alternatively, staff can send an ACH form via CRM, allowing customers to enter their bank info securely online.
For more details: Saving Credit Cards & ACH Payment Methods - Sharper University
Running Auto Pay
After generating invoices and applying any credits, run the autopay batch:
Go to CRM → Payments.
Click the Auto Pay button.
Select the date criteria (due date or invoice date), specify customers if needed, and choose whether to itemize payments.
Click Pay to process all eligible auto payments in bulk.
Only customers with a default saved payment method (card or ACH) will be included in the autopay run.
For more details: Auto Pay - Sharper University
Payment Processing & Allocation
Payments can be processed for multiple invoices at once or for individual invoices.
When making a payment, you can choose to save the method for future use and set it as default for auto pay.
Prepayments can be automatically allocated to future invoices using the Auto Settle feature.
For more details: Payments - Sharper University
Auto Pay Flags
There are auto pay flags in various areas of Sharper. Having these flags enabled is what marks if an invoice can be auto paid.
Auto Pay Reservations - On each reservation in the accounting section there will be a flag called “Auto Pay” turn this flag on if you wish for all future invoices generated from that reservation to be an auto pay candidate.
Auto Pay Invoices - There is an auto pay flag on ALL invoices. When creating or looking at an invoice via: CRM > Invoices > flag located on the top right of the invoice. This flag will already be turned on if the invoice was generated from a reservation that had auto pay turned on
Auto Pay in Module Defaults - In Company Settings > Outlet Defaults > Scroll to Auto Pay. By turning on the marina auto pay flag for example will ensure ALL NEW reservations and meter reads will have auto pay turned on by default in the marina module. By turning on the POS flag will ensure all house account charges have auto pay turned on.
For more details: Setting Up Autopay - Sharper University
To summarize, it is essential for an account to have a default payment method and auto-pay enabled on their invoices in order to enable automatic payments. To guarantee that auto-pay is activated by default on invoices, you need to ensure that the flag is enabled on their reservation and meter read.
Just because Auto pay is enabled on an invoice does not guarantee automatic payment. Similarly, merely having a default saved payment method does not ensure that an invoice will be automatically paid. Auto pay functionality only becomes operational when both conditions are met in combination.