The contract is signed. The deal is closed. Everyone moves on to the next thing.
Someone on your team still has to create an invoice, send it, wait, follow up, and reconcile. At low volume, it’s a nuisance. At scale, it’s a cash flow problem that costs finance and sales hours every week and pushes days sales outstanding higher than it needs to be.
This page covers how to close that gap and set up automated payment collection inside your contracts so the payment step happens at signing, not days later. Clients can pay through whichever gateway their business already uses.
Why chasing payment after the contract is signed is a broken workflow
The problem isn’t that finance is slow, or sales doesn’t hand off cleanly. It’s that there’s a handoff at all.
Every step between a signed contract and a paid invoice is a place where things go wrong. Line items are re-keyed with incorrect amounts. The invoice goes to the wrong contact. The PO number from the contract doesn’t make it onto the invoice. Each one is a small error, and each one adds a day or two while someone fixes it.
The timing matters too. Clients are most willing to pay the moment they sign — that’s when the value of what they’re buying is clearest, and the intent to move forward is strongest. A day later, the signed contract is already in a folder somewhere, and the invoice is a new task competing with everything else in their inbox.
And the work splits across teams that don’t share visibility. Sales closes the deal. Someone in finance chases the payment. Nobody knows where a given contract sits without pinging someone else. At volume, that’s a measurable drag on cash flow — not just an admin annoyance.
The data is already in the contract. The problem is that payment isn’t.
What changes when payment is built into the contract
When the payment step lives inside the document itself, the workflow collapses:
Payment is collected the moment the contract is signed — zero lag between signed and paid.
No separate invoice to create, no payment link to send, no follow-up email to write.
Cash flow becomes predictable. The business knows when money arrives because it arrives at signing.
Finance gets visibility into payment status without chasing sales for updates.
Clients get a cleaner, more professional close — one flow from review to signature to payment.
Is this the right approach for your business?
Automated payment collection at signing fits some workflows better than others.
You’re a strong fit if:
You collect payment at signing or shortly after — deposits, full payment on signature, first month or year upfront.
Your contracts have a clear payment amount tied to the document, whether that’s a flat fee, a pricing table total, or a deposit percentage.
You send enough contracts that manual invoicing is a real time drain — agencies, consultancies, SaaS teams, professional services firms.
You’re currently juggling two or more tools to get from signed to paid, and the handoff between them is where things slip.
Consider alternatives if:
You operate on net-30 or net-60 terms with no upfront collection at signing — the value is smaller when there’s no signing-moment payment to capture.
Final payment amounts are negotiated or calculated after the contract is signed, based on scope changes or usage.
Your payment process relies on complex accounting logic that lives in your ERP and can’t easily be represented in the contract itself.
How to set up automated payment collection in your contracts: step-by-step
The entire setup happens inside the document. No separate payment tool, no separate invoice, no engineering required.
1. Connect your payment gateway
This is a one-time setup per gateway. In PandaDoc, go to Settings → Integrations, select your payment gateway, and authenticate. Once connected, payment becomes available as a step you can add to any document or template.
The gateway choice is a business decision, not just a technical one. Your clients will pay through whatever gateway you connect, so pick the one that matches how they already like to pay and how your finance stack is set up.
Choosing the right gateway for your business:
Stripe: best for SaaS, subscriptions, and retainer-based businesses. The only gateway that supports recurring billing natively inside PandaDoc documents (via the quote builder add-on). Also supports ACH bank transfers for lower processing fees on larger payments.
PayPal: best for businesses whose clients prefer PayPal, B2C-leaning work, or international clients in markets where PayPal is the default. Supports one-time payments.
Square: best for businesses that also take in-person payments and want one system across both online and offline. Supports one-time payments, and recurring billing via the Advanced Quotes add-on.
QuickBooks Payments: best for teams already on QuickBooks who want payments and accounting in the same ecosystem. Supports one-time payments.
Authorize.net: best for businesses with an existing Authorize.net merchant account they want to keep using. Supports one-time payments.
A creative agency might connect PayPal because most of their freelance clients already have PayPal accounts and prefer it. A SaaS company uses Stripe so they can set up recurring monthly billing directly from the signed agreement — no separate billing system needed.
A note on recurring billing: only Stripe and Square support recurring billing inside PandaDoc, and both require the quote builder add-on (CPQ for Stripe, Advanced Quotes for Square). PayPal, QuickBooks Payments, and Authorize.net support one-time payments only.
2. Add a payment step to your contract template
Once a gateway is connected, a payment extension is available in any document or template. You don’t need to configure it per contract — set it up in the template once, and every document generated from it includes the payment step.
Open a template and select the Payment extension from the right panel. From there:
Assign the payer: which recipient on the contract is responsible for payment.
Set the payment amount: either a fixed number, or tied dynamically to the pricing table total in the document, so the amount updates automatically when line items change.
Apply to the template: every document created from that template inherits the payment step. No per-document setup, no one on your team forgetting to add it.
A consulting firm might set up its SOW template with a 50% deposit payment step. Every new SOW they generate automatically includes a payment request for half the engagement total — no manual configuration per client, and nothing that can be accidentally left off.
3. Send the contract: payment triggers automatically at signing
This is the core mechanic. Once all required parties have signed, the client is automatically prompted to pay. No one on your team has to send a payment link, forward an invoice, or remember to follow up.
The payment request is triggered by the final signature — not by anyone on your team.
The client pays through the connected gateway without leaving the document. Card details, bank transfer, or whichever method the gateway supports.
Document status moves automatically: Waiting for payment → Paid once the transaction clears.
Automatic reminders go out for any unpaid balances, so overdue payments surface on their own instead of getting lost.
A SaaS company sends an annual subscription agreement to a new customer. The moment the buyer signs, they’re taken directly to checkout — payment is done before the tab closes. The signed, paid contract lands in the PandaDoc library with a full audit trail, and Stripe records the transaction with the document name attached for reconciliation.
A note on timing: payment is triggered only after all required signers have completed the document. The document must reach Completed status before payment processes. This applies across all supported gateways.
4. Track payment status across your document pipeline
Once payment lives inside the workflow, finance gets real-time visibility without asking anyone for an update.
PandaDoc’s payments dashboard shows paid, pending, and overdue documents in one view.
Document tracking shows payment status alongside signing status — no cross-referencing between your CRM, your billing tool, and your email.
Each gateway records the transaction in its own dashboard with the PandaDoc document name attached, so reconciliation against Stripe, PayPal, or QuickBooks stays clean.
Completed, signed, paid documents are stored automatically with a full audit trail for compliance and bookkeeping.
Implementation timeline and requirements
This is a fast-start workflow. No engineering required for any gateway.
Typical scope: 1–2 hours to connect a gateway, configure a payment-enabled template, and test end-to-end with a dummy document.
Account owner or admin: connects the payment gateway. One-time per gateway.
Finance or ops lead: configures payment amounts and sets up template payment settings.
Optional — RevOps or Sales Ops: needed if you’re setting up recurring billing via the quote builder (Stripe or Square) and want product catalog items mapped to recurring line items.
Ongoing maintenance: minimal. Revisit when adding new contract types, adjusting payment terms, or switching gateways.
Results
Once payment lives inside the contract, the workflow changes shape. Finance stops chasing. Sales stops getting asked. The time between signed and paid drops from days to minutes.
Time from signed contract to payment drops from days to minutes.
Finance stops fielding “has the client paid?” questions from sales.
Clients get a cleaner close — one document, one flow, done.
Recurring revenue is managed automatically for teams using Stripe or Square with the quote builder add-on.