Payments

    The money arrives before they do

    Take the fee at the moment of booking over UPI or card, so the session is paid for before anyone walks in. We take no cut of it, on any plan.

    14 days of Pro free, no card and no call. After that $19 a month flat, one price for the whole practice, or stay on the free tier.

    A physiotherapy session paid at the moment of booking. The reference, the instrument and the settlement line are all on the record, so the payment and the appointment are the same object rather than two things you reconcile on a Sunday.

    Sample data. Made-up names and a made-up week, not a customer.

    What you use today

    Today the money is a payment link, a QR sticker, and a screenshot

    The default is a payment link pasted into a chat, a QR code taped to the reception desk, and a client sending you a screenshot as proof. It works, right up until you try to work out what a month actually earned.

    What you use today

    A payment link, a QR sticker, a receipt book, and a bank statement

    Collecting the fee
    You paste a payment link into the chat after the session and hope. Some pay that evening, some pay next week, some you ask twice.
    Knowing who has paid
    A screenshot in a chat thread, a bank SMS, and a mental note. Three sources, none of them attached to the appointment.
    No-shows
    Unpaid slot, wasted hour, and an awkward message you probably never send.
    Working out the month
    A bank statement, a receipt book, and an hour on a Sunday.

    With operate1

    Payment attached to the booking that caused it

    Collecting the fee
    The fee is taken at booking. The appointment does not exist until the payment does.
    Knowing who has paid
    The payment sits on the booking with its reference and instrument. One place, one answer.
    No-shows
    It was paid at booking. If you would rather charge only on a late cancellation, set the window and the rule enforces itself.
    Working out the month
    Add the collected column. It was already added.

    4

    Unpaid sessions in a slow month

    1 hr

    Sunday reconciling the month

    $320

    Four $80 sessions never collected

    An illustration of a normal month at an $80 session fee, not a measured result and not a claim about anyone's practice. Your own fee and your own unpaid count give you your own number.

    How it works

    Step 1

    Price the service once

    Set the fee, whether a deposit is enough to hold the slot, and how late a cancellation has to be before it is chargeable. That is the whole configuration.

    Step 2

    The client pays as they book

    Card, UPI or a local payment method, on their phone, in their own currency, on the same screen where they picked the time. Stripe handles cards worldwide and Razorpay handles UPI, cards and net banking in India. Both are certified at PCI DSS Level 1, the highest tier the card networks define.

    Step 3

    It settles to your bank

    The money goes to your account through your own payment processor. operate1 adds no commission on top of what the processor charges, on any plan.

    Competitor reality

    How this category actually makes money from your clients

    Payments is where the difference between a software vendor and a marketplace shows up. The patterns below repeat across booking marketplaces and practice suites worldwide; check any vendor's own terms and you will find at least one.

    Booking marketplaces

    Category pattern
    Their price, their terms
    Marketplaces commonly take a commission or platform fee on consults and bookings routed through them, and sell listing placement and leads on top of the subscription.
    Where it falls short for you
    The software vendor also owns the demand channel that ranks you. That is a structural conflict rather than a bad decision by anyone: a practice cannot easily tell whether it is the customer or the inventory. We take zero commission and run no directory.

    Source: The platforms' own provider terms and listing products.

    Payments as a tier upgrade

    Category pattern
    Their price, their terms
    In many scheduling tools, taking money online at booking is a feature of the higher tiers rather than of the product, often with the whole year due upfront.
    Where it falls short for you
    Getting paid is the point of the booking, not an upsell on it. Payment at booking works on every operate1 plan, including Free, with zero commission from us.

    Source: The vendors' own published pricing pages.

    Credit wallets and meters

    Category pattern
    Their price, their terms
    Reminders, messages and telephony are commonly sold as prepaid credit bundles, with the per-unit price falling only if you sign a longer contract.
    Where it falls short for you
    The clearest picture of the category's instinct: put a meter on the workflow and sell refills. The cost of telling someone they owe you should not be metered, and here it is not.

    Source: The vendors' own published add-on pricing.

    Every figure above is what the vendor themselves publish, or is marked as coming from a third party, and the vendors named are the ones a practice like yours would actually shortlist. Much of this category quotes per seat and bills the year upfront, so compare the cash you hand over on day one, not the sticker. Research recorded 4 August 2026. Prices move. Check the vendor's own page before you decide, and if their tool fits you better, buy theirs.

    What you are probably thinking

    You say zero commission. Is that actually true on every plan?

    Yes, on every plan, including Free. Operate1 takes no percentage of the payments you collect. We make our money from the subscription and from nothing else. Your payment processor's own fee is separate and always was, on every product in this market: Razorpay or Stripe charge their standard rate and that money goes to them, not to us.

    Can I pay you for Pro right now?

    No. Subscription checkout is not wired yet, so there is no way to hand us money on this website today even if you wanted to. The free tier works, you can put your records and your booking page in, and when checkout goes live you will be asked once and can say no. We would rather say this on the page than have you find a broken payment screen.

    My clients pay cash. Most of them will not use UPI.

    Then take cash and mark it on the booking. The point is not to force a payment method on a client who does not want one, it is that the appointment and whatever was paid for it live on the same record instead of in a receipt book that only you can read.

    What about tax invoices for my own clients?

    Be careful here, because this is a place where software oversells. We record what was charged and what was collected against each booking and each client. We do not currently generate a compliant tax invoice for your clients, whether that means a US sales receipt, a VAT invoice, or a GST invoice in India, and if your accountant needs that today you will still need your invoicing tool. It is on the roadmap, and it is below rather than above for that reason.

    Not built yet, stated plainly

    Payments in and out of a practice is a long road. Here is exactly where the road currently ends.

    • Subscription checkout. You cannot pay operate1 on this site today. The free tier is the only way in right now.
    • Tax invoices for your own clients, in any jurisdiction. We record the charge and the payment, not a statutory invoice.
    • Automatic tax calculation and payout reporting. Both are on the roadmap and neither is in your account.
    • One-click refunds from inside operate1. Refunds go through your payment processor's own dashboard for now.

    Stop chasing the fee after the session

    Put one service in with a price, publish the page, and let the next booking pay for itself. That is the test, and it takes ten minutes. Nothing to pay us, because there is currently nothing to pay us with.

    What you are risking on Pro

    14 days free, no card. After that $19 a month flat. Billed monthly, so the most you can ever be out of pocket is one month.

    Cancel yourself in the app. No retention call, no email chain, no notice period. One-click full export is being built now. Until it lands, ask us and we send you every record we hold, in a format you can open.

    Subscription fees are not refundable, so if you are unsure, stay on monthly rather than prepaying the year. Cancelling stops the next charge and your plan runs to the end of the period you paid for.

    Being straight about the limit: the 14-Day Move Guarantee, where we move your records for you or your next three months are free, is on Business, not Pro. On Pro you do the import yourself.

    Written up per trade

    Who this is for, in their own words

    The same product, described in the vocabulary of each trade, with an honest list of what is built for it and what is not.