Charging an application fee upon submission of the Slate-hosted application is straightforward and adaptable to your application process.

📝 Payment widgets don’t function on Slate-hosted-application-scoped forms.

Determining the fee

Calculate the application fee with rules that run upon application submission.

If your application process has variable fees and fee waivers, organize these payment rules within an exclusivity group.

📖 Further reading: Charge an Application Fee When an Application Is Submitted

Requiring payment to submit application

This requirement is set on the application’s round.

To require applicants to pay a fee or fees before they can access their status portal:

1. From the main navigation, select Database.

2. Select Application Rounds.

3. Select the round for which you want to require payment.

4. Configure the following settings:

   • (Optional) Payment Grace Period (Days): Allows the fee to be paid after the Round deadline within the number of days specified.

     • For example, if the application submission deadline is January 1, but application fee payments will be accepted through January 15, enter 15 here.

     • If left blank, applicants can pay as long as the application is in an active round.

     • 📝 Note: Only works when used in conjunction with a Round Deadline.

   • Require Payment to Submit Application: Yes
      

5. Select Save.

With this setting activated, the Submit Application button at the end of the application’s Review page becomes Finalize Application and Pay.

Customize button text

To customize this button’s text:

1. From the main navigation, select Database.

2. Select Application Editor.

3. Select the part ID review.

4. In the Custom Label for Finalize Application and Pay field, enter your custom text.
   

5. Select Save.

What happens when the applicant clicks Finalize Application and Pay

1. Internally, the application is considered submitted.

2. All rules with the trigger Upon application submission run immediately.

3. When routed to the payment processor, the amount charged reflects the current balance of all application-scoped payments.

By contrast, if the round setting Require Payment to Submit Application had been set to No, payment activities set by rules would be added to the record and could be completed at any time through a payment link in an email or a payment widget on the application status page.

Collecting the fee

To use Slate to collect an application fee, you will need to configure a deposit account with Slate Payments or an external payment processor. All instances are provisioned with an Application Fee payment account prompt, which can be used for this purpose. If you use Slate Payments, you can configure a deposit account to collect payouts for the Application Fee in the application editor. Many external payment processors require an xslt configuration, which you can request through the Support Desk and requires setup.

You can create additional payment account prompts if you have multiple deposit accounts to send the payouts for application fees.

Collecting the fee with Slate Payments

If your institution is using Slate Payments, you can create deposit accounts directly in Slate.

This process is fueled by Stripe and is PCI compliant. No financial information is stored in Slate.

📖 Further reading: Create deposit accounts with Slate Payments

Collecting the fee with an external payment processor

The steps for setting up an external payment processor vary slightly depending on the third party, and always involves an initial integration with help with the Slate Support Desk.

📖 Further reading: Collecting fees with an external payment processor