Online Payments (ACH & Card)

How members pay their monthly invoices online with ACH or card via Stripe Connect, including the ACH settlement timeline and what each notification means.

Overview

5-by-5 lets members pay their monthly invoices directly from the invoice email with either a bank transfer (ACH) or a credit/debit card. Payments are processed through Stripe Connect, which routes the money straight to the group’s connected Stripe account — not to BlueSky Applications. The group treasurer doesn’t see card numbers, and 5-by-5 never holds member funds.

This page covers the member’s experience of paying a bill and the timeline notifications generated along the way. For the treasurer-side setup (connecting the group’s Stripe account, posting bills), see Finances.

Paying a Bill

When the group treasurer posts the month’s bills, every member receives an invoice email at the address on their member record. The email contains:

• The total amount due
• A line-item breakdown (flight charges, fixed share, shared expenses, individual adjustments, sales tax if applicable)
• A Pay with Card or Bank button
• The payment due date (configured in the group’s payment settings)

Tap the button to open a Stripe Checkout page in your browser. From there:

1. Choose Bank account (ACH) or Card
2. Enter your payment details
3. Confirm

Stripe handles the rest. The member is returned to a confirmation page on blueskyapplications.com once the authorization completes.

Viewing Your Invoice on Mobile

You don’t have to dig up the email to see what a charge is for. On the mobile app’s Home screen, tap your row in Member Balances to open your most recent invoice — a full line-item breakdown (prior balance, flight charges, monthly fixed cost with any itemized sub-lines, shared expenses, adjustments, sales tax if applicable, and the total), along with the amount due and due date. Treasurers can tap any member’s row to view theirs.

Card vs. ACH: What’s Different

For routine monthly bills, ACH is significantly cheaper for the group. For one-off catch-up payments or members who don’t trust their bank with new linkups, cards are convenient.

Who pays these fees? By default the group absorbs both — they’re deducted from what settles to the group’s Stripe account. The ACH fee is always the group’s (typically under $5, and under $5 for any bill below ~$625). The card fee can optionally be passed to the member who chooses to pay by card — see Passing Card Fees to the Payer below.

Passing Card Fees to the Payer (Optional)

By default the group absorbs Stripe’s processing fee on every payment. Treasurers can optionally shift the card fee onto the member who chooses to pay by card, so the group receives the full invoice amount. Turn it on in Settings → Online Payments → “Pass card processing fees to the payer” (only available once Stripe is connected).

When it’s on, the invoice pay link first shows a “Choose how to pay” page:

• Pay by bank (ACH) is always free to the member — no added fee.
• Pay by card adds a clearly-disclosed processing fee, grossed up to cover Stripe’s ~2.9% + $0.30, so the group nets the full invoice.
• Because bank is always a fee-free option, no member is ever forced to pay a surcharge — which keeps the whole thing clean and disclosed.

The member’s dues balance is credited the invoice amount only — the card fee they cover is not treated as a dues overpayment.

ACH is always absorbed by the group. Bank payments still cost the group 0.8% (capped at $5) per transaction, and that fee is never passed on — only the card fee can be. For a typical few-hundred-dollar bill, ACH costs the group under $5, so it stays the cheapest option for everyone.

The ACH Payment Lifecycle

ACH transfers move through the U.S. Federal Reserve’s settlement system, which is slow but cheap. Here’s exactly what happens between the moment you authorize an ACH payment and the moment the group sees the money:

1. Authorization (Day 0)

You enter your bank routing and account number on the Stripe Checkout page and click Pay. Stripe captures the authorization but doesn’t yet have the money — that happens in the background over the next several days.

Immediately after authorization:

• You receive an “ACH Payment Initiated” email from billing@blueskyapplications.com (blue header) confirming the authorization and explaining the 3-5 business day clearance window
• An Update pending badge appears next to your name on the home dashboard and the Finances page so the group can see at a glance that payment is in flight
• Your balance shown in 5-by-5 does not change yet — the ledger is the source of truth, and the ledger only records the payment after settlement

2. Settlement (Days 1-5)

Stripe initiates the ACH debit. The receiving bank (yours) processes the debit on its own schedule. Typical timelines:

• Same-day to next-day if you bank with a large institution that processes ACH promptly
• 2-4 business days for most community banks and credit unions
• 5+ business days if the authorization falls over a weekend or holiday

During this window, nothing visible changes. The “Update pending” badge stays up.

3. Successful Settlement

When the bank confirms the transfer, Stripe notifies 5-by-5 and three things happen automatically within a few seconds of each other:

• A payment entry is recorded in the group ledger, reducing your balance
• A green “Payment Receipt” email is sent to you confirming the amount, the date, and your new account balance
• The “Update pending” badge disappears

4. Failed Settlement

If the bank rejects the transfer — most often due to insufficient funds, but also from account closures, incorrect routing/account numbers, or stop-payment orders — Stripe notifies 5-by-5 and:

• A red “ACH Payment Failed” email is sent to you with the reason from your bank
• Every Owner and Admin in the group is BCC’d on that same email, so the treasurer hears about it the same day
• The “Update pending” badge disappears
• The bill stays unpaid — you’ll need to retry payment from the original invoice email or contact the treasurer

Paying Multiple Invoices

Each invoice has its own payment link, but the simplest path is almost always to pay only your most recent invoice. Each new monthly bill automatically rolls any unpaid balance from prior months into a Prior balance line item in the new total — so the total on your most recent invoice is the full amount you owe, with everything earlier already folded in. Paying that one invoice settles the lot.

If you’d rather pay a specific older invoice — to tie a payment to a particular month for your own recordkeeping, for example — you can open any prior invoice email and pay it individually. The Stripe Checkout page also lets you adjust the payment amount at the time of payment, so partial payments are possible from any invoice’s link.

There’s no consolidated “pay all” button by design: each Stripe payment links to a specific monthly bill so the ledger records cleanly. Folding prior balances into the latest invoice’s total achieves the same effect with simpler accounting.

What if My Payment Goes to Spam?

Invoice emails come from billing@blueskyapplications.com. If you’re not seeing your monthly bill in your inbox, check your spam folder and follow the steps in Email Notifications > Keeping 5-by-5 Emails Out of Spam to make sure future bills route correctly.

Refunds & Disputes

5-by-5 doesn’t issue refunds directly — those are between you and your group treasurer. If a charge was posted in error:

1. Contact your treasurer to confirm the correction
2. The treasurer issues a credit to your ledger directly (Finances page → Add Entry → negative adjustment)
3. The credit appears on your next monthly invoice as a reduction

For Stripe-level disputes (a payment you don’t recognize, fraud, etc.), contact your bank or card issuer to initiate a chargeback. Stripe will notify the group’s treasurer if a dispute is opened.

Stripe Connect Setup (For Treasurers)

To accept online ACH and card payments, the group treasurer connects a Stripe Connect account from the web dashboard:

1. Open Settings → Billing tab → Online Payments card
2. Click Connect with Stripe
3. Stripe walks you through their standard onboarding flow — business info, bank account, identity verification
4. Once Stripe approves, the Pay with Card or Bank button starts appearing on every posted invoice and ACH/card payments settle directly into the group’s bank account

Tips for Stripe’s onboarding forms

Stripe’s onboarding form has a lot of fields, and many of them aren’t a perfect fit for an aircraft co-ownership group. The same tips below are surfaced right beside the Connect with Stripe button in the app — replicated here for reference and for reviewing ahead of time:

• Business type: if your group isn’t an LLC, pick Individual / Sole Proprietor. Use the treasurer’s SSN when asked for a Tax ID.
• Industry: pick Membership Organizations → Civic, fraternal, or social associations. (If your group has non-profit status, “Charities” works too. Avoid unrelated categories — Stripe flags mismatches.)
• Website: a Facebook group, club page, or blueskyapplications.com/5-by-5 works if you don’t have one.
• Product description: describe it factually, e.g.,

  “Members of our aircraft co-ownership group pay monthly dues covering fuel, maintenance, insurance, and hangar costs for our jointly-owned aircraft. We do not sell services to the public.”

• Bank account: where member payments deposit. Stripe keeps this private — members never see it.
• Payout schedule: choose Automatic weekly — payouts land in your bank on a predictable cadence without the treasurer having to log in and trigger them.
• Statement descriptor: use your club / group name (e.g., RENTON FLYERS) if Stripe lets you. For Individual / Sole Proprietor accounts, Stripe usually constrains this to your legal name — in that case, members will see the treasurer’s name on their card statement.
• Support phone & address: these show on receipts members see. A Google Voice number and the hangar/FBO address keep the treasurer’s personal info private if that matters to you.
• Stripe Climate / carbon contribution: skip it. It skims a percentage off your group’s dues to fund carbon-removal projects — money that otherwise goes toward operating the aircraft.
• Stripe Tax / sales tax: click “Not right now.” Member dues in a co-ownership are cost-sharing, not a taxable commercial sale — you don’t need Stripe to handle sales tax collection. (5-by-5’s own Sales Tax Authorities feature is the path if your state actually requires it on dues — see Finances → Sales Tax Report.)
• Only one person per group does this setup — every member can then pay via the link in their invoice emails.
• Fees: Stripe charges the group 2.9% + $0.30 per card payment and 0.8% capped at $5 per ACH payment. ACH is dramatically cheaper for bills over ~$600. 5-by-5 takes no additional platform fee.

After connection

• Members see the Pay with Card or Bank button on their invoice emails
• The treasurer sees per-bill payment status (Paid, Processing, Failed) on the Finances page
• Funds settle directly into the group’s bank account, typically T+2 days from successful settlement
• The Online Payments card on Settings → Billing shows Connected and active with a button to open the Stripe Dashboard for refunds, payout history, and account changes

5-by-5 takes no cut of these payments. Stripe’s standard processing fees apply.

Security

• Payment authorizations happen on Stripe-hosted pages — 5-by-5 never sees or stores card numbers, bank account numbers, or routing numbers
• ACH credentials entered at checkout are encrypted in Stripe’s vault and tokenized for repeat payments
• The per-invoice payment token is the only credential needed to pay a specific bill, so it must remain reasonably private. Treat the invoice email like you would any other financial document — don’t forward it to people you don’t trust