A service fee is an amount Sharper can automatically add to a payment to help offset card processing costs. It can apply across your whole system or be turned on and off channel by channel and product by product. This article covers every place the service fee is configured — where the fee itself is set up, which payment channels charge it, how to override it on a single product, what the customer sees, and who is allowed to change it.
Looking for how the service fee behaves on a refund? See CRM - Refund Amounts, Service Fees, and Gateway Limits — that's covered there in detail, not repeated here.
Where the Fee Itself Is Set Up
The fee amount and which product it posts to are configured in Company Settings → Payment Processors. This is a list, not a single settings page — open the specific processor you want to change (for example, your Credit Card processor). If you have more than one processor set up, each one has its own Service Fee Amount and items, so check all of them if you're not sure which is charging what.
This screen is set up by your Sharper implementation team — if you need the fee amount changed, or a different product assigned to it, submit a ticket and a Sharper representative will make the change for you. The relevant fields, partway down the processor's edit screen:
Field | What It Does |
Service Fee Amount | The fee, as a percentage of the payment amount — not a flat dollar amount. |
Default service Fee Item | The product the fee posts to when no module-specific item below applies. |
Booking / Marina / Campground service Fee Item | Lets each module post its service fee to a different product, if you want them tracked separately in accounting. |
The same screen also has a Client Sort field and a Terms of Service editor — those aren't related to the service fee and are covered elsewhere.
Choosing Which Payment Channels Charge the Fee
Whether the fee actually applies to a given payment is controlled separately, in Company Settings → Outlet Defaults → Apply Service Fees. There's a toggle for each payment channel — Auto Pay, Booking, CRM, POS, POS Invoices, Slips, Transient Slips, Online Bookings, Online Payments, and Scheduled Payments — so you can charge the fee on, say, POS sales but not on Auto Pay charges. Every toggle defaults independently; turning one on doesn't affect the others.
Overriding the Fee on a Single Product
Even with a channel toggle on, an individual product can opt out of — or force — the service fee. Open the product in Point of Sale → Products and set its Service Fee field:
Default — follows the system-wide setting from Outlet Defaults. Use this unless the product needs to behave differently from everything else.
Off — this product never charges a service fee, even when the channel toggle is on.
On — this product always charges a service fee when sold, even when the channel toggle is off.
What the Customer Sees
By default, the fee appears on invoices and receipts labeled Service Fee. To use different wording — for example, "Convenience Fee" — set Service Fee Text in Company Settings → Outlet Defaults → Service Fee Settings. Leave it blank to keep the default label.
Controlling Who Can Change the Fee at Payment Time
Two settings control whether the calculated service fee can be adjusted by hand when a payment or refund is being entered:
Read Only Service Fee Input, in Company Settings → Outlet Defaults → Service Fee Settings — when turned on, nobody can edit the fee amount; the system-calculated figure is always used.
The Edit CC Service Fee role permission (System Settings → Role Permissions) — when Read Only Service Fee Input is off, only staff whose role includes this permission can manually change the fee amount. Everyone else sees it but can't edit it.
Note: If a staff member says the service fee field is greyed out, it's one of these two settings — check Read Only Service Fee Input first, then the user's role permissions.
Coming soon: Sharper is adding support for credit card surcharging — passing the card processing cost to the customer as its own itemized line, as an alternative to the service fee model described in this article. This article will be updated once surcharging is available.