Sometimes when processing a sale in Timely using the TimelyPay terminal, you may receive the following error:

Unfortunately, there can be an issue where payment has been taken with the terminal but for some reason (usually a network issue) our payment provider, Stripe, hasn’t been able to tell Timely that it was successful. This means that no invoice is created for the sale with that payment.

We understand how important reliability in payments is, so our team are actively working on a solution to ensure that this doesn’t happen in future irrespective of any connection issues.

If you're ever in doubt as to whether a payment has successfully gone through the best way to check is by looking at the TimelyPay transaction history. The TimelyPay transaction history report shows all TimelyPay payments and whether they were made with the terminal or online. This report comes directly from our payment provider, Stripe, so is the most accurate report of any TimelyPay transactions. 

Check transaction history report

Start by checking whether the transaction was successful by navigating to your TimelyPay transaction history either by selecting the Transaction history button in the error message or at the bottom of the TimelyPay page under Setup.

If the transaction was successful, you'll see it in the report but with a little i and no invoice like in the image below:

Mark as paid by Credit card

From here, the best way to resolve this is by going back and completing the sale in Timely, marking it as paid by Credit card as the payment method:

 

If your business has cash up enabled. During your end-of-day cash-up, you will find that the balances are slightly out because of this extra sale. The balance in the TimelyPay section pulls through directly from our payment provider Stripe meaning the daily total will effectively include the payment amount twice (even though payment has actually only been taken once through TimelyPay - Terminal).

You will need to balance out the amount that was marked as paid with ‘Credit card’ and add a cash-up note to explain the situation and why the daily total is over by the value of that payment.

 

Check if a duplicate payment has mistakenly been taken

In some cases you may not see that an error occured and inadvertantly process another identical terminal payment. This will mean that your client has been charged twice.

The first payment will not be linked to the sale and there will be no invoice, but there is an additional transaction for the same amount that has been successfully completed and linked to an invoice.

Identify if a duplicate payment has been taken

The easiest way to spot a duplicate payment is by checking the TimelyPay transaction history at the bottom of the TimelyPay page under Setup.

If a duplicate payment has been taken,  you should be able to see two transactions timed very close together on the same day for the same client and same value. One will appear with the little i and no invoice, while the other will appear as a normal terminal transaction with an invoice attached.

If this duplicate payment scenario applies, we recommend that you reach out to Timely Support and communicate the following information.

• I am a TimelyPay terminals customer and I processed a payment by terminal and an error occured processing the transaction.
• Provide a screenshot of your transaction history report.
• Identify that duplicate payments were taken and you have resolved one payment, by manually applying it as paid by credit card.
• Request that they refund the remaining transaction.