Offline Payment Proof & Receipts

Some of your buyers will pay by bank transfer, cash, or another method that happens away from your site. The order sits at Pending Payment until someone confirms the money arrived, and without a way to show that it did, confirming it is a conversation over email.

This feature closes that loop: the buyer attaches proof, you review it, and approving it marks the order paid and credits the vendor.

Off by default. A marketplace taking only card payments should not show buyers an upload box it will never use.

Turning it on

  1. Go to Sell Services > Settings > Orders & Disputes.
  2. Find Offline Payment Proof.
  3. Tick Let buyers upload proof of an offline payment for an admin to verify.
  4. Save.

You also need at least one offline payment method enabled under Settings > Payment Gateways, with your bank details or instructions in it. That text is what the buyer sees after ordering, so put everything they need to pay you in it.

You can name several methods there - bank transfer, cash, UPI - each with its own instructions. The buyer picks one at checkout, and the order records which one they chose, so the instructions they were given never change afterwards even if you rename or remove that method.

How it works for the buyer

  1. They order and choose the offline payment method at checkout.
  2. The order is created at Pending Payment, and your payment instructions appear on the order page.
  3. They pay you however your instructions say.
  4. They return to the order and upload their proof - a bank transfer receipt, a screenshot, a reference number.
  5. They wait for you to confirm.

The buyer can see the status of what they submitted at every point, so they are not left wondering whether you received it.

How it works for you

  1. The submission appears for review, and you are notified by email.
  2. Open it and check the proof against your bank statement.
  3. Approve it, and the order is marked paid, the vendor is credited, and the work begins - exactly as if a card had been charged.
  4. Or reject it with a reason. The buyer is told why and can submit again.

Rejecting is not an accusation. The most common reasons are an unreadable screenshot or a transfer that has not cleared yet, and giving the reason saves both of you an email.

Things worth knowing

Approving is the same action as a card payment succeeding. The vendor is credited through exactly one path in this plugin, whether the money arrived by Stripe or by bank transfer. There is no separate "offline" accounting to reconcile later.

Two admins cannot double-credit an order. If two of you open the same submission and both approve it, the vendor is credited once. The claim is locked at the database level rather than by asking you to coordinate.

A paid order gets a printable receipt. Once payment is confirmed - by any method - the buyer can open a clean, printable receipt from their order and save it as a PDF from their browser's print dialog. Nothing to configure.

Uploads follow your WordPress media rules. Size limits and allowed file types are whatever your site already permits.

When not to use it

If you only take card payments, leave this off. If you take bank transfer but handle confirmation entirely outside the site - a bookkeeper marking orders paid in the admin once a day - you can also leave it off and use Mark as Paid on the order screen instead. This feature is for when you want the buyer to be able to show you, and to see where their order stands while they wait.

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