📚 Part of the series Application Building Phase II: The Slate-hosted Application

Application logic, including hard and soft fails, ensure applicants enter all necessary data prior to submitting an application.

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

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.

📖 Charge an Application Fee When an Application Is Submitted

Requiring payment to submit application

You can require that the application fee is either paid or waived at submission time by selecting Yes for the Require Payment option on a particular application round.

Enabling the Require Payment to Submit Application within an Application Round configuration has three primary effects:

1. Changes the "Submit Application" button on the Review page to read "Finalize Application and Pay."

2. After selecting Finalize Application and Pay, and until payment has been completed for an application, the Application Management page displays that application's status as "Awaiting Payment."

3. After selecting Finalize Application and Pay, and until payment has been completed for an application, opening an application automatically takes the user to the Application Fee Payment page. Only until payment has been received or waived can the applicant proceed to the Application Status Portal.

The [application].[submitted_paid] Column

On the application table, there is a column called “submitted_paid" ([application].[submitted_paid]) that determines whether Slate should send applicants to the payment page or to the status page.

Slate populates this column when the applicant first accesses their status page, which can happen after they pay their fee, or if they did not owe a fee in the first place. It follows this logic:

• If the column is populated, Slate routes the record to the status page

• If the column is not populated, Slate routes the record to the payment page

This requirement is set on the application’s round.

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

Creating the requirement on the round

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

1. Go to Database → Application Rounds.

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

3. 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
      

4. 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.

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 with Slate Payments

To use Slate to collect an application fee, configure a deposit account with Slate Payments. This process is fueled by Stripe and is PCI compliant. No financial information is stored in Slate.

➡️ Create deposit accounts with Slate Payments

• All databases include 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 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.

📖 Collecting fees with an external payment processor

Waiving fees

You can create Fee Waiver as a custom field, with the fee waiver codes as custom prompts.

📖 Collecting application fee waiver codes