Connect Stripe to bill clients

What Stripe Connect does for you

TaskJuice bills your clients through Stripe Connect. You complete a one-time onboarding flow that creates a Stripe Express account in your name; from that point on, every charge against a client lands in your Stripe account, and you pay out from there to your bank like any other Stripe merchant.

This model has three properties that matter:

• Funds never touch TaskJuice. Client payments settle directly to your Connect account. TaskJuice cannot freeze, redirect, or hold your money.
• You own the merchant-of-record relationship. Refunds, chargebacks, and disputes are between you, the client, and Stripe. TaskJuice is not in the loop.
• A 0.5% platform fee is deducted per successful charge. The fee is set at subscription creation and applied automatically by Stripe. There are no hidden processing fees on top of this beyond Stripe's published rates.

You cannot create client products, subscriptions, or invoices until Connect onboarding is complete. The agency-side billing pages show a "Connect Stripe first" empty state until chargesEnabled flips to true on your account.

Before you start

Have the following ready before you click Connect Stripe. Stripe collects these during the hosted onboarding flow and the flow stalls until they're provided.

• Your business legal name and address. If you're a sole proprietor, this is your full legal name and home address.
• Your tax ID. EIN for US businesses, SSN for US sole proprietors, or the equivalent for your country.
• A bank account for payouts. Routing and account numbers, in the name of the business or person on the Stripe account.
• A government-issued ID for the account representative. Driver's license or passport. Stripe asks for an upload during identity verification.
• A working phone number for two-factor authentication. Stripe requires SMS or authenticator-app 2FA on every Connect account.

If you don't have one of these yet, Stripe lets you save partial progress and return. The TaskJuice onboarding panel shows the resume action when your account is in the partial state.

Step 1: Open Billing → Stripe Connect

1. Open agency billing

   From your agency settings, go to Billing, or visit /settings/billing directly.

2. Open the Stripe Connect surface

   Click into Stripe Connect, or visit /settings/billing/connect directly. The page shows a banner explaining that funds settle to your account and that TaskJuice takes a 0.5% platform fee, plus a status card for your Connect account.

If you've never started onboarding, the status card reads No Stripe account yet with a Connect Stripe button. If you've started but not finished, it reads Onboarding in progress with a Continue setup button. Either button takes you into Stripe's hosted flow.

Step 2: Complete Stripe's hosted onboarding

Click Connect Stripe (or Continue setup). You're redirected to a Stripe-hosted URL that walks you through:

1. Business type (individual or company)
2. Business details (legal name, tax ID, address, website)
3. Account representative details and ID upload
4. Bank account for payouts
5. Two-factor authentication setup

The flow takes 5-15 minutes depending on how quickly Stripe can verify your identity documents. Some businesses are verified instantly; others require a manual review that can take 1-3 business days.

When you finish (or save and exit), Stripe redirects you back to /settings/billing/connect?status=return. The TaskJuice page refreshes your account status from Stripe so you don't need to reload.

Step 3: Wait for capabilities to enable

After you complete the hosted flow, Stripe takes a moment to enable two capabilities on your account:

• Charges (chargesEnabled: true) — required before you can charge a client.
• Payouts (payoutsEnabled: true) — required before Stripe will release funds to your bank.

The Connect status card shows both capabilities as badges. Once both are green, the page reads Active and you're ready to create client products and subscriptions.

If only Charges is enabled but Payouts isn't, you can still bill clients and Stripe will hold the funds in your account until the payout capability clears. Stripe usually resolves this within a day if it's pending on identity verification; if it's pending on additional documents, the status card surfaces a Manage requirements button that opens Stripe's dashboard so you can complete what's outstanding.

Step 4: Confirm you can charge clients

Once chargesEnabled is true, the agency-side billing pages unlock. Go to /settings/billing/products to define your first client product, then to a client's workspace billing page to start a subscription. See Bill your clients for the end-to-end flow.

A quick sanity check: the empty-state copy on the products page changes from "Connect Stripe to start billing clients" to "No products yet — create your first one." That's the visible signal that the gate has lifted.

Manage requirements that come back later

Stripe can flag additional requirements on your account at any time — for example, when you cross a revenue threshold, when a country adds a regulatory requirement, or when an uploaded document expires. When this happens, the TaskJuice status card switches to Action required with a list of outstanding items pulled directly from Stripe.

Click Manage requirements on the status card. You're redirected to Stripe's dashboard with a focused view of what's outstanding. Resolving them in Stripe automatically updates your TaskJuice status on the next webhook (usually within seconds).

If you ignore an outstanding requirement past Stripe's deadline, the relevant capability is automatically disabled. Charges may continue (depending on the requirement) but payouts will pause until you resolve it.

Common pitfalls

The status card stays at "Onboarding in progress" after I finished. Stripe's account.updated webhook usually arrives within seconds. If it takes longer, click anywhere off the page and back, or refresh — the page reloads the account snapshot from Stripe on every mount. If it's still wrong after a minute, check Stripe's dashboard directly; if Stripe shows your account as active, contact support so the mirror can be resynced.

Onboarding fails identity verification. Stripe's hosted flow surfaces the specific reason (blurry photo, name mismatch, expired document). Resubmit through the same flow — TaskJuice doesn't see the documents you upload; the resolution lives entirely in Stripe.

I want to bill from a different Stripe account than the one I onboarded. A TaskJuice agency is bound to one Connect account. Switching to a different one requires contacting support; you can't swap accounts from the settings page because outstanding subscriptions and invoices reference the original account.

Payouts are pending but charges work. This is normal during the first 7-14 days while Stripe builds a payment history on your account. Funds accrue in your Stripe balance and release on the standard payout schedule once Stripe clears the payout hold.

What Stripe Connect does not do

• It does not generate invoices for your TaskJuice subscription. Your agency's bill from TaskJuice (the platform fee aside) is on a separate billing surface and uses a different Stripe account on the platform side. The two are unrelated; you can use Connect without ever paying TaskJuice and you can pay TaskJuice without ever connecting Stripe.
• It does not let TaskJuice cancel your client subscriptions. Cancellations are an agency action; TaskJuice never unilaterally cancels a client's subscription, even if your agency is suspended.
• It does not require your clients to have Stripe accounts. Clients pay with a card; their experience is the standard Stripe Checkout / hosted invoice flow.

Next steps

• Bill your clients — create products, start subscriptions, and send invoices through your Connect account.
• What your clients see in the portal — the billing surfaces clients interact with.
• Invite a client to a workspace — bring the people you'll be billing into the portal.