Payments

How money reaches CoreSync#

Most payments arrive on their own. Your payment gateway tells CoreSync about each one within seconds, and CoreSync credits the customer and reconnects them. You only step in when a payment can't find its customer, or when money came in by hand.

Your admin sets up paybills, tills, KopoKopo and banks in Settings → Payment → Gateways. See Settings. If you have more than one gateway, each one can serve certain zones, plans or routers. CoreSync then sends each customer's STK push through the right one.

What your customers see when they pay is in Paying for internet.

How a payment finds its customer#

Every subscriber has a subscriber code, for example AML1042. It's the account number customers type when they pay, and the one on their SMS reminders. Always give customers their subscriber code to pay with.

When a paybill or bank payment arrives, CoreSync looks for the customer in this order, and takes the first match:

• The subscriber code they typed.
• The account number they typed.
• The PPPoE username they typed.
• The phone number that paid.

CoreSync forgives small slips in what was typed. Spaces, dashes and leading zeros are ignored, and capital or small letters don't matter for the subscriber code. So aml 1042 and AML-1042 both find AML1042.

If nothing matches, the payment is saved and waits on the Unredeemed tab for you. Nothing is ever lost: the money is recorded even when CoreSync can't tell whose it is.

Hotspot purchases show with a HOTSPOT status. They paid for a voucher or a session, not a subscriber, so they never appear as unredeemed. See Hotspot.

What a payment does#

Once a payment has found its customer, CoreSync does the same things every time, whether the money came from M-Pesa, a bank, a match or a cash record:

1. Pays off charges first. If the customer owes an installation fee or another charge, the payment settles it, oldest first. Your admin can turn this off.
2. Puts the rest into the customer's Credit.
3. Renews them from that credit. If the credit covers their price, they get one full cycle. The price is their negotiated price if they have one, less any discount.
4. Reconnects them at their plan's speed, and sends the usual payment SMS.

A renewal adds the cycle to the current expiry if the customer is still active, or starts it from now if they had expired. The date rules are in Plans and renewals.

Renewals, moves and credit changes are written on the customer's Timeline tab, so you can always see what a payment did.

Partial payments, overpayments and discounts#

Your ISP chooses what happens when someone pays less or more than their price. Your admin sets both in Settings → Payment → Policies.

Discounts. Plan and company-wide discounts are set in Settings → Payment → Discounts, under Plan & company-wide discounts. A discount comes off at renewal, on top of any negotiated price. Only one discount applies to a customer at a time. A customer's own price is set on their subscription: see Plans and renewals.

Installation from the first payment. New customers often pay setup and the first month together. If your admin turns on Guess installation fee from a new subscriber's first payment (Settings → Payment → Charges), what's left after the first renewal is booked as an installation fee instead of credit. It only looks at a customer's first payment, in their first 30 days, and never when they already have an installation charge.

The Payments page#

Open Payments under Billing in the menu. It lists every payment, newest first, with its date, provider, M-Pesa code or receipt, customer, phone, the account they typed, amount and status.

amani.coresyncisp.com/admin/payments

• All Payments shows everything. Unredeemed shows payments that found no customer. To check shows payments that may be on the wrong customer.
• Search by M-Pesa code, phone, the account they typed, or the customer's name or code. For phones, type the last nine digits (712345678) so both 0712… and 254712… forms match.
• Narrow the list with Provider, Status, From and To. Clear filters puts it back.
• View on a row opens that customer.

A customer's own payments are on their page, on the Payments tab, under Payment History.

Record cash or a bank deposit#

Use this when money reached you outside a gateway: cash paid to a technician, or a deposit your bank didn't report. It applies the money exactly like an M-Pesa payment, so the customer is renewed and reconnected.

1. On the Payments page, press Record Payment.
2. Under Subscriber, search by name, code, building or zone, and pick the customer.
3. Type the Amount (KES) and choose the Provider: Cash, Bank Transfer or M-Pesa (manual).
4. Type the Reference / Receipt #: the receipt number you wrote, or the bank reference. Then press Record Payment.

   amani.coresyncisp.com/admin/payments

   

Send an M-Pesa prompt (STK push)#

Use this when a customer is on the phone with you and wants to pay now. They get an M-Pesa prompt, enter their PIN, and are renewed the moment Safaricom confirms it.

1. On the Payments page, press STK Push.
2. Under Subscriber, pick the customer. Their phone fills in by itself. To send the prompt to another number, change Phone (optional), for example to 0712 345 678.
3. Type the Amount (KES) in whole shillings and press Send STK Push.

   

4. The dialog shows Waiting for payment. Ask the customer to enter their M-Pesa PIN. When it arrives you see Payment Confirmed! Press Done.

If nothing comes back after about a minute and a half, the dialog says No confirmation yet. The payment may still arrive, so check the list a little later before you send another prompt. If the customer cancels, you see Payment was cancelled by customer.

Now and then Safaricom can't confirm a payment straight away. CoreSync holds it and asks Safaricom again later. If Safaricom then says it didn't go through, the payment stays on Unredeemed for you to decide.

Redeem a payment that found no customer#

A payment lands on Unredeemed when the customer typed something CoreSync doesn't know, paid a till from a phone that isn't on any account, or paid for a terminated account. Redeeming gives it to the right customer and applies it in full: charges, credit, renewal, reconnection and SMS.

1. On the Payments page, open the Unredeemed tab. The number beside it is how many are waiting.

   amani.coresyncisp.com/admin/payments?tab=unmatched

   

2. Look at the Phone and Account Ref columns. They usually tell you whose it is. Call the number if you're not sure.
3. Press Redeem on the payment. Under Subscriber, search for the customer and pick them.
4. Check the M-Pesa code and amount at the top, then press Redeem Payment.

   amani.coresyncisp.com/admin/payments?tab=unmatched

   

A payment can only be redeemed once. If it's already on a customer and that's the wrong one, move it instead.

Move a payment that went to the wrong customer#

Customers mistype their code: Wanjiru meant AML1042 and typed AML1024, so Otieno got her month. Moving the payment fixes both accounts in one step. CoreSync takes back what the payment gave the wrong customer, then applies it to the right one as if it had just arrived.

1. Find the payment on the Payments page and press Move on its row.
2. Under Move it to, pick the right customer. Under Why, say what happened, for example Typed AML1024 instead of AML1042.
3. Read the preview before you confirm. Taken back from shows the wrong customer's expiry and credit before and after. Applied to shows the right customer as they are now. Notes underneath warn you if the wrong customer will be cut off.

   amani.coresyncisp.com/admin/payments?tab=check

   

4. Press Move payment.

What happens to each side:

• The right customer is credited and renewed by their plan, and gets the usual payment SMS.
• The wrong customer's expiry goes back to where it was before the payment. If that's in the past, they're disconnected and get the usual expiry SMS. They get no message about the move itself.
• If the wrong customer already spent the leftover credit on a later renewal, their credit goes below zero. Their next payment covers that first.
• Charges the payment had paid off become owed again.
• The payment shows Moved from and the wrong customer's name. The move is on both customers' Timeline.

CoreSync refuses a move it can't undo cleanly, and tells you why. For example, when the payment also upgraded the wrong customer's plan, or when it was an installation fee recorded by hand. Fix those by hand. It also refuses to move money onto a terminated customer: restore them first.

The To check list#

CoreSync notices when a payment came from one customer's phone but credited a different customer. That's often a typo. Sometimes it's someone paying for a relative or a tenant. These payments are applied as typed, and listed on the To check tab for 60 days so a person can look.

1. On the Payments page, open the To check tab.

   amani.coresyncisp.com/admin/payments?tab=check

   

2. Press Review on a payment. The Check payment dialog already has the payer chosen under Move it to, and for a likely typo the reason is filled in.
3. If it belongs to the payer, press Move payment. If it's right where it is, press Payment is correct. Either way it leaves the list.

With Manage Payments alone you can mark a payment correct, but not move it.

Installation and other charges#

Charges are money a customer owes outside their plan: installation, a router replacement, maintenance or anything else. A charge either records money you already took, or waits to be paid out of the customer's next payment.

1. Open the customer, go to the Payments tab and press Charges.
2. Press Add Charge. Choose the Category: Installation, Router Replacement, Maintenance or Other. Type the Amount (KES) and, if you like, a description.
3. If you already have the money, tick Already collected — record as paid now and choose the Payment Method. Otherwise leave it, and the charge stays pending.
4. Press Add Charge.

A pending charge is paid off by the customer's next payment before anything reaches their credit. To forgive one, press the waive button on its row, give a reason and press Waive.

Installation fee collected outside CoreSync? On the customer's Subscription tab, the Installation row says Not paid. Press the pencil beside it to record the fee. This writes a real payment.

A default installation amount for the Add subscriber form is set in Settings → Payment → Charges.

Import M-Pesa payments#

Use this for recent payments that reached your paybill but never reached CoreSync, for example during an outage. Download the statement from M-Pesa, save it as CSV, and import it.

1. On the Payments page, press Import M-Pesa, then drop your CSV file on the box.
2. On Map Fields, check which column feeds each field. CoreSync guesses from the column names, but it doesn't recognise every M-Pesa statement heading. If it says Missing: Amount, pick Paid In for Amount, Other Party Info for Payer Phone and A/C No. for Account Reference. Receipt / Reference and Amount are required. Payer Phone and Account Reference are what match payments to customers, so map them too.

   amani.coresyncisp.com/admin/payments

   

3. Open Preview and check the first rows look right.
4. Press the import button, which shows the row count, for example Import 42 Payments. Progress shows live. At the end you see how many were applied, how many are awaiting reconciliation (they found no customer and wait on Unredeemed), how many were duplicates and how many failed.
5. If any failed, press Download failed rows (CSV), fix them and import that file. Press Done.

Receipts CoreSync already holds are skipped as duplicates, so importing the same file twice is safe.

Reconcile: paid but not extended#

Reconcile looks at completed payments from the last 30 days and lists customers who got less time than they paid for, or whose login expiry doesn't match their subscription.

1. On the Payments page, press Reconcile. The button shows Scanning... while it works.
2. Read the list. Each row shows the login, when they paid, the plan length and amount, and the expiry they have against the one they should have. If the list is empty you see All payments match — no discrepancies found.
3. Tick the rows to fix. To set your own expiry for a row, type it under Custom date.
4. Press Fix Selected, or Fix All for every row.

Anyone who can view payments can run the check. Fixing needs Manage Payments. A fix only ever moves an expiry later, unless you typed a custom date.

Payments are history: no refund button#

A payment is a record that money arrived. CoreSync never deletes or reverses one, and there's no refund button. That keeps your books honest: every shilling that came in stays on record. Fix the effect on the customer instead.

1. Open the customer and go to the Subscription tab.
2. Press the pencil beside Credit. In Adjust credit, choose Deduct, type the Amount (KES) and pick the Reason (required).
3. Check the new balance shown, then press Apply. Credit can't go below zero.
4. If the payment had already paid for a renewal, there may be no credit left to deduct. Press the pencil beside Expiry Date instead and set it to what it was before. How expiry dates work is in Plans and renewals.

The payment itself stays in the list and on the customer's Payment History. The credit change and the date change are written on their Timeline with your name and reason.

Common mistakes#

• Recording an M-Pesa payment as cash. If the M-Pesa code is already in the list, redeem or move it. A second record counts the money twice.
• Giving free days instead of recording money. If the customer paid, record or redeem the payment. Free days leave no money on record and the books won't add up.
• Pressing STK Push again while the first prompt is open. Each press is a new prompt, and the customer can end up paying twice.
• Importing an old statement. Every row is applied today, renews customers and texts them. Only import recent payments that never arrived.
• Recording a fake receipt number. Use the real one. It's how CoreSync stops the same money being counted twice.
• Telling customers to pay with their phone number or name. Give them their subscriber code. A phone match is the last resort, and fails when someone else's phone pays.
• Redeeming a payment for a terminated account. It's refused on purpose. Restore the account first if the money is really theirs.

If it doesn't work#