PayPolka

Public Pages & Client Portal

PayPolka gives your clients clean, branded web pages to view invoices and estimates and to take action, without needing to log in. This page covers what those pages show, your account’s standalone payment page, and how the links that lead to them work.

The public invoice page

When you send an invoice, your client gets a link to a public invoice page. It shows:

  • The invoice document as a clean card (line items, totals, and tax).
  • The payment methods you allowed on that invoice, and nothing else.
  • The payment history, including any payments and pending notices.
  • A pending-clearance notice for ACH payments while the bank transfer is still settling.

Card and Cash App Pay clear immediately; ACH shows as pending until it lands; cash and check show your instructions. For the full picture of how each method behaves, see Getting paid.

The public estimate page

When you send an estimate, your client gets a link to a public estimate page that mirrors the invoice card layout. From there, when the estimate is actionable, the client can:

  • Accept or Decline the estimate.
  • Provide a typed signature name to accept (acceptance also records the time and the client’s IP address).
  • Add an optional note when accepting or declining.
  • Download any proposal or spec files you attached.

If you’ve published your terms, the page includes a terms acknowledgment block stating that accepting the estimate (or paying an invoice) confirms acceptance of your published terms.

To learn how to build and send estimates, see Estimates.

Your payment page

Every account also gets a standalone Make a payment page at a permanent address: app.paypolka.com/pay/your-slug. It isn’t tied to any one invoice, so you can put the link in your email signature, on your website, or on a printed invoice, and clients can pay you from it any time.

To pay, a client enters:

  • Name and email
  • The invoice number they’re paying (typed off whatever copy they have — the INV- prefix is optional)
  • An amount (anywhere from $1 to $100,000)

They then pick one of your enabled online methods (card, ACH, or Cash App Pay) and check out through Stripe. If you pass processing fees to clients, the fee is quoted for the exact method they picked, with a live total shown before they continue.

When the invoice number and email line up with an invoice and a known contact, the payment lands on that invoice automatically, same as if they’d paid from the invoice’s own page. When they don’t (a typo’d number, or a bookkeeper paying from an email you don’t have on file), the money still comes through: it appears under Invoices → Freeform, where you pick the right invoice and apply it. You’ll see a banner on the Invoices page and get an email whenever there’s money waiting to be applied.

If you accept cash or check, the page also shows your payment instructions. If you haven’t connected Stripe yet, the page politely says online payment isn’t available.

Public invoice and estimate links are bearer links: anyone who has the URL can open the page, with no login required. This makes it easy for your client to share an invoice with a bookkeeper or business partner, but it also means you should only share the link with people you trust.

If a link is ever shared too widely or you simply want to cut off access, you can regenerate the link. Regenerating creates a new URL and immediately invalidates the old one, so any previously shared link stops working.

Estimate links and invoice links are separate. Regenerating one does not affect the other, and accepting an estimate does not give a client access to a related invoice’s link.

The client portal

The client portal is a single page for one client that lists their portal-visible invoices. It includes a summary showing:

  • Invoice count
  • Total collected
  • Outstanding balance

The portal is invoice-only. It does not show estimates. Estimates are always reached through their own separate public estimate links.