How to Use Payable Forms with Google Forms

What Payable Forms does

Payable Forms is a Google Forms add-on from Payable Inc. that turns a form into a checkout. It reads the prices in the answers someone picks, adds them up, and sends them to a payment page after they submit.

• Payment providers: Stripe, PayPal, Square, Razorpay or Rapyd, one per form, connected to your own account.
• Where orders go: a Google Sheet that shows which orders are paid.
• Who uses it: event registrations, fundraisers, T-shirt orders, club fees and invoices.

Google Forms has no payment field of its own, which is why most guides send you to Payable Forms. Payment links, QR codes and every other method are in our guide to Google Forms payments.

How to create a payable Google Form

Get two things right before you install it. Prices go in the answers, and the email address comes from the form's settings.

1. In Settings, set Collect email addresses to Verified or Responder input.
2. Put a price in each answer that costs money, such as Adult ticket - $25.
3. Click the three dots at the top right, then Get add-ons. Search for Payable Forms, click Install and allow access.
4. Click the puzzle-piece icon, choose Payable Forms, then Make this Form Payable.
5. In the sidebar, run Auto-Configure Form and Sheet and Sync Theme.
6. Click Connect a Payment Provider and sign in to Stripe, PayPal, Square, Razorpay or Rapyd.
7. Submit a test order while the form is in Test Mode, then switch the form on as payable for real orders.

Steps 4 to 7 follow Payable's own getting-started guide. The price goes in the answer, not in the question title. A question called "T-shirt ($20)" with answers "Small" and "Large" gives Payable nothing to add up.

What people see when they pay

The respondent fills in the form and clicks Submit. Then they move to Payable's checkout page, styled to match your form, and pay with the provider you connected.

The response is saved before the payment. If someone closes the checkout, their answers are already in your form. Check the Sheet's payment status before you count anyone as paid.

In Test Mode, test payments never reach your payment account, and the customer emails go to you instead of the respondent. Turn it off before you share the form.

Is Payable Forms free?

Partly. It's free to install and has no subscription. Payable takes a fee on each successful payment, on top of what your payment provider charges you.

Prices come from Payable's own pricing page. Payable doesn't charge your customers anything extra at checkout. If you want them to cover the cost, you can add a handling fee in the checkout settings.

What that costs on a real form

• A $25 workshop, 100 sign-ups: 49¢ each, so $49 to Payable, plus your provider's fees.
• A $150 conference pass, 100 sign-ups: 1% each, so $150 to Payable, plus your provider's fees.
• $5 raffle tickets: no Payable fee at all.

Is Payable Forms safe and legit?

Payable Forms has 465K+ installs and 173 ratings on the Marketplace, and Payable Inc. builds it in Toronto, Canada. People pay on Payable's hosted checkout through Stripe, PayPal, Square, Razorpay or Rapyd, so card details never go into your Google Form.

Before you install it, look at what it can do in your Google account. Its listing asks for nine permissions, including:

• See, edit, create and delete all your Google Sheets, not only the one linked to the form.
• Send email as you, for the receipts and notifications.
• Run when you are not present, so it can process orders while you're offline.

These fit what it does. On a work or school account, check with your admin first. Install it on the account that owns the form, not a personal account with years of spreadsheets in it.

Subscriptions, tax and shipping

Payable's help centre lists a few features beyond one-off payments:

• Subscriptions and instalments, billed by the day, week, month, quarter or year. PayPal needs a business account for these.
• Tax and a handling fee, added at checkout.
• Shipping addresses, collected for physical orders.

For an order form with a product list and a cart, Neartail is the other common add-on. Both are compared in our guide to Google Forms add-ons.

Payable Forms not working? Fix common problems

Tips before you take real money

• Pay yourself once. A real $1 order shows you the receipt, the Sheet row and the payout end to end.
• Price the answers clearly. "Adult - $25" is easy to read and gives Payable the number it needs.
• Close the form when you're sold out. Set a response limit, as shown in our guide to limiting responses, so nobody pays for a place you don't have.
• Chase the unpaid rows. Sort the Sheet by payment status each day of a sign-up.

Where Payable Forms stops

Payable Forms bolts a checkout onto a form that wasn't built for one. You type prices into answer text and link a Sheet. You give the add-on wide access to your account and pay it a cut of most payments.

In FormNX the payment is part of the form. A calculation field adds up the order as people choose, Stripe takes the card, and each response shows Paid or Due. There's nothing to install and no Sheet to keep in sync.

Stripe and calculation fields are on the free plan. PayPal, Square and the Products field are on paid plans.

For product orders, see the order form builder page. To compare the two builders in full, see the Google Forms alternative page.