Making a Payment in Municipal Payments Collection
Once you have your Municipal Payments Collection (MPC) portal set up, your citizens can begin using it to pay any fees you have enabled.
Municipal Payments One Time Payment Link
- The MPC portal can be accessed via the link on the CivicPay Online (CPO) login page or via a customizable HTML-based button generated on the My Agency> General Information> Promotional Materials page.
- For more information on using this button, please see the Promotional Materials page.
- There is currently not a way for citizens to access the MPC while logged in to CPO. This functionality may be developed in the future.
- Click the One Time Payment link to open the One Time Payment page.
One Time Payment Page
- The One Time Payment page will display payment options for each module selected in the Miscellaneous Payments section of the My Agency> Settings> Municipal Payments page.
- Each link will open a selection page where the user can select the application, assessment, license, municipal, or permit fees they would like to pay.
Fee Selection Page
- After clicking the Municipal Payments link on the One Time Payment page, the Fee Selection page will be displayed.
- The Fee Selection page will display all the fees that have been enabled on the Municipal Payments settings page (My Agency> Settings> Municipal Payments).
- Citizens will use the Select Items section to select the fees they would like to pay. If your agency has enabled the Allow Amount Edit toggle on the selected fee, the citizen will be able to edit the amount to be paid on the fee.
- For more information about adding fees to the Fee Selection page and setting up fees citizens can edit, see the Municipal Payments Settings page.
- Payment limits are set on the Payment Settings page (My Agency> Settings> Payment Settings). See the Payment Settings page for more information.
- The Add + and Remove – buttons can then be used to add or remove selected fees in the Total section.
- The message displayed at the bottom of the Select Fees page can be customized on the Municipal Payments Settings page. Springbrook recommends agencies use this custom message to direct their citizens to include important permit or license number details in the Memo field when paying fees.
- Once the citizen makes their selections, they will click the PURCHASE ITEMS button to proceed to the payment page.
- The Payment page is used to collect the citizen's payment details.
- The Credit Card Information section works in a similar manner to many websites your citizens are likely familiar with. They will be prompted to provide their credit card information every time they access the MPC portal to make a payment. If a citizen has their credit card information saved in their web browser, they will be able to use the browser's autofill functionality to enter their payment information.
- At this time, MPC can only accept payment via credit card. ACH payment functionality is planned for a future release.
- The Total section will display the fees selected in the previous step as well as any additional service or convenience fees the agency collects.
- Service and convenience fees will only be displayed and collected if the Municipal Fee Percent (service fees) and/or Municipal Fee Amount (convenience fees) fields are set up on the My Agency> Settings> Fees page in CPO.
- The Other Information section is used to record the citizen's name (required) and email address (optional).
- If the citizen provides an email address, a copy of the receipt will be emailed to the specified address. See the example email receipt below.
- The Memo field is used to enter any details relevant to the fees being paid. For example, when a citizen pays a pet license fee via the MPC, it may make sense for your agency to record the pet license number on the transactions. The contents of the Memo field will populate the Receipt Comment field on the cash receipt generated by this transaction.
- The Memo field will only display when making a Municipal Payments payment.
- As mentioned in the previous section, the message displayed at the bottom of the page can be customized on the My Agency> Settings> Custom Messages page. Springbrook recommends agencies use this custom message to direct their citizens to include important permit or license number details in the Memo field when paying fees.
- Some one time payment processes include file upload functionality in order to allow organizations to require citizens attach supporting documents to their payments.
- Once the citizen has entered all the required payment information and checked the Captcha toggle, they can click the COMPLETE PURCHASE button to submit their payment.
Payment Confirmation Page
- Once a citizen submits their payment, the Payment Confirmation page will be displayed.
- Citizens can click the PRINT CONFIRMATION button to print a paper copy or save a PDF of the confirmation message.
Payment Confirmation Email
- If a citizen entered their email address on the Payment page, they will receive an email similar to the example above.