FormAssembly Partner Highlight: Chargent, from AppFrontier
Salesforce, Paypal, and the many other FormAssembly integrations are a key part of what makes us such a useful form solution. Today, we’re highlighting one of our great payment-related connectors that helps simplify the often complicated process of billing.
Chargent, a tool by AppFrontier, is a Salesforce-embedded billing system that connects to 25 popular payment connectors. Mutual customers of FormAssembly and Chargent use the two systems together to handle payments such as donations and orders and easily transfer information into Salesforce.
The main goal of Chargent, which was acquired in 2012 by AppFrontier, is to make billing, especially subscription or recurring payments, easier.
“I’d worked in a lot of internet service companies in the past, and billing has always been a real problem,” said David Hecht, founder of AppFrontier and long-time participant in the Salesforce community. “Billing systems are complicated and difficult to manage.”
Usually, billing and invoicing systems live outside of Salesforce and don’t allow companies a lot of visibility or control. With Chargent, billing is seamlessly connected to Salesforce, simplifying the job of taking and processing payments.
Simplifying Recurring and Subscription Billing
Chargent is most popular among Salesforce customers who use it to bill subscription or recurring payments, which can become complicated once subscriptions reach a certain volume.
“Where it really becomes a challenge to manage is when you have multiple customers, charging every month,” Hecht said. “Managing that is not something that can really be done manually without a lot of errors.”
100% Native to Salesforce
Many businesses rely on Salesforce as the main location for storing customer data. Because Chargent is native to this widely used CRM, that makes it possible for companies to combine their use of Chargent with Salesforce features like email templates and reporting.
Additionally, Salesforce cases and opportunities can be used in conjunction with Chargent to take payments directly in Salesforce.
25 Different Payment Tool Integrations
Chargent boasts the largest number of integrations with payment solutions out of any billing tool. Some of their connectors include:
- Stripe
- Authorize.net
- Merchant e-solutions
- CyberSource
- eWAY
Whatever connector a business is using, it’s likely they can find a way to connect it to Chargent.
“We try to make it easy for customers to keep whatever payment integrations they’ve got,” Hecht said.
Streamlines Customer Service
Chargent helps take the hassle out of billing and improve the customer service companies are able to offer. It’s also possible to process refunds through Chargent and complete transactions over the phone, making Chargent perfect for use in call centers.
Chargent also helps eliminate payment issues by showing the results of a payment up front. Transactions and other payment information such as declines are easy to see in Salesforce, providing a whole picture of a customer from a billing standpoint.
FormAssembly-Chargent Connector
The FormAssembly-Chargent connector allows payments to be posted to Salesforce through forms. In addition to being simple to implement, FormAssembly doesn’t require advanced design or web development skills.
“We were pretty excited when FormAssembly came out with the connector for Chargent. Web forms can be complicated, and FormAssembly definitely takes care of that in a nice way,” Hecht said. “Something like FormAssembly allows people to quickly put something into place that works well.”
Lots of customers need to create forms to process transactions, Hecht said, but getting good forms that work correctly isn’t always easy.
“It’s nice to be able to give customers a quick solution to a problem that a lot of people have.”
Getting Started With Chargent + FormAssembly
Could you use Chargent for your business? Here’s a quick guide to setting up the connector to FormAssembly.
With your Salesforce username, password and security token, you can link your FormAssembly account to Salesforce, if your accounts aren’t already connected.
Connecting Chargent simply requires a few details like which payment gateway you want to connect (based on what company is processing the payment) as well as how payments will be collected and the currency they will be received in. If you’re interested in testing Chargent out before buying, they offer a 30-day free trial.
After setting up connections to Salesforce and Chargent, you’ll need to configure the connector on the FormAssembly side by mapping the fields that collect payment details to give the connector instructions on how to transfer this information.
4. Billing Details & 5. Shipping Details
Just like you mapped credit card information above, you’ll also map fields related to the billing and shipping addresses.
As we mentioned above, Chargent works well for one-time or recurring charges. This step is where you’ll set that up.
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Thanks to AppFrontier for sharing information on Chargent and the many benefits of this billing tool! You can read more about the connector in our documentation. If you don’t yet have a FormAssembly account, sign up for a free 14-day trial and take it for a test spin.
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