1. Overview

Payment workflow in Zoho Creator enables you to collect and manage online payments directly from your Zoho Creator forms. It allows you to define when a payment should be initiated, what amount should be charged, and what actions should be performed based on the transaction result. A payment workflow is triggered during form submission. If the form submission meets the criteria that you defined, the user will be redirected to the configured payment gateway to complete the transaction. After the payment is processed, Zoho Creator automatically executes the associated success or failure actions.

Payment workflows are commonly used for scenarios such as:

1. Event registrations
2. Order and invoice payments
3. Donations and fundraising
4. Subscription renewals
5. Booking and reservation fees

By combining form submissions, automated criteria based triggers, and post payment actions, payment workflows help you create end to end payment driven processes within your Zoho Creator application.

1.1 Payment gateways in Payment workflows

Payment workflow operates via payment gateways to manage transaction. A payment gateway is a service used by e-businesses and online retailers to accept online payments from their customers. The online payment modes accepted by payment gateways include credit cards, debit cards, and e-wallets. A payment gateway acts as the middleman between the customer's bank and the merchant's bank. It accepts the payment from the customer and makes sure that it reaches the merchant's bank account. Before you configure a payment workflow, you must establish a payment gateway by mapping your payment gateway credentials in Zoho Creator. This is a one-time process. Payment workflows now rely on Payment Gateways powered by Zoho Checkout. You must configure them in Operations > Payment Gateways to continue processing transactions. Learn more about payment gateways

Payment gateways supported country-wise

Zoho Creator supports the following payment gateways:

Once you have established the connection with any of the above payment gateways, you can configure the payment workflow in your form. When users submit the Creator form, they will be redirected to the payment gateway that you have added and enabled in the Account Setup section.

Note: - The currency type that you choose for the payment field in your form must be same as the payment gateway's currency type that you have added and enabled in the Account setup section.
-  You can add one connection for each payment gateway. However, you can only have one payment gateway enabled in your Zoho Creator account at a time.
-   You can create custom connectors if you want to integrate Creator with a payment gateway other than the ones mentioned in the above table.

The payment status will be shown in the list report(the default report based on the form in which the payment workflow is configured) when the transaction is complete.

2. Payment workflow dashboard

The payment workflow dashboard offers a comprehensive view of all payment workflows configured within an application. It presents workflows in a structured and organized manner, making it easy to identify their associated forms, actions, status, and other key details. Each workflow is listed under the form it belongs to, and the workflows appear in the sequence in which they were created.

2.2. Components of payment workflow dashboard

1. New Workflow: Click New Workflow to create a new payment workflow. You will be taken to the workflow creation screen. Click here to learn how to create a payment workflow.
2. Search: Use the search bar to find specific payment workflows by entering keywords related to the workflow name or form name.
3. Form name: Payment workflow will be classified and listed under its respective form name.
4. Edit workflow: Click on the workflow name to navigate to the workflow's edit screen. You can view, add, and edit the associated actions. Click here to learn more about managing payment workflows.
5. Delete: Hover over the workflow and click on the delete icon ()that appears to delete the workflow permanently.
6. Actions: The number of actions associated within a workflow is shown here. Hover over the text to see the information related to actions.
   
7. When: Displays when the workflow will be executed.
8. Enabled/Disabled: Use the toggle to enable or disable a workflow. This lets you temporarily suspend its execution without deleting it.
9. Created on: Specifies when the workflow was created.

3. Payment workflow builder

When a payment workflow is created, you will be directed to the workflow builder where you can configure and manage the actions that should occur when a payment succeeds or fails. You can add multiple actions to a workflow and apply criteria to ensure that specific actions are executed only for selected records. The actions are executed in the order in which they appear in the builder, and this order can be changed at any time by dragging and dropping the actions. You can also modify the workflow properties, such as the workflow name, criteria, and the amount field that determines the payment amount. Learn how to configure actions for payment workflows

3.1. Components of payment workflow builder

1. Payment Success: All actions that should be executed when the payment is successful are configured under this section.
2. Payment Failure: All actions that should be executed when the payment fails are configured under this section.
3. Action block: The container that holds a specific set of actions or scripts to be executed. Each action block can have a multiple actions which will have a common execution criteria.
4. Criteria: Displays the condition criteria that must be met for the action block to execute. You can add multiple criteria to refine the logic further. Hover over it to reveal edit and delete icons to modify or remove the criteria.

5. Action: Displays the action configured within the action block.
   1. Click to edit it, or hover to reveal the edit, delete and add icons to modify, remove or add more action within an action block.
      
   2. You can use the drag handle to rearrange actions by dragging and dropping them within the same action block or across different action blocks within the payment success or payment failure sections.
6. Add new action: Creates a new action block in the workflow. To add a new action within an existing action block, hover over the action and click the + icon.
7. Slider: You can use the slider to rearrange an action block within the payment success or payment failure sections by dragging and dropping the block. You can also use the drag handle that appears when you hover over the action block to perform the same action.
   
8. Navigator: Lets you to easily navigate between payment success and payment failure section within the workflow builder.
9. Manage integration: Click to view and manage the payment gateways in your payment workflows, you can view, revoke authorization and add new payment gateways.
   
10. Workflow properties: Click the gear icon () to open the right pane with workflow properties. You can rename the workflow, define condition criteria for records to enter the payment workflow, and modify the Amount Field that determines the payment amount.
    

4. Payment workflow actions

After creating an payment workflow, you can use the workflow builder to configure actions to execute on success or failure of payment. Multiple actions can be configured and they are executed in the order in which they appear in the builder. By default, an action to send an email notification to the logged in user is configured for both approval and rejection scenarios. You can edit this action or add additional actions as needed.

You can also define criteria for each action to ensure that specific actions are executed only for selected records that meet the defined conditions. By default, actions are executed in the order in which they are created; however, you can modify the execution order by rearranging them using drag-and-drop within the builder. This provides greater flexibility in controlling workflow logic and determining the sequence in which actions are performed.

The following actions can be configured in both the approval and rejection blocks of an payment workflow:

5. Business use cases

1. Customer order processing
   A retail business uses an Order Management Zoho Creator application to handle online customer purchases. When a customer places an order through the Order Form, a payment workflow is triggered. If the payment succeeds, the workflow automatically updates the order status to 'Confirmed,' generates an invoice, and sends an order confirmation email to the customer. It also notifies the warehouse team to begin packing and triggers the inventory workflow to deduct stock levels accordingly. If the payment fails, the workflow sends an automated notification to the customer informing them that the payment was unsuccessful and prompts them to resubmit the form to initiate the payment again.
2. Student fee payment processing
   An educational institute uses a Zoho Creator Fee Management application to handle semester fee collection. When a student submits the Semester Fee form, a payment workflow is triggered. If the payment succeeds, the system marks the fee status as 'Paid,' and generates a fee receipt, and emails it to the student and parent. If the payment fails, the workflow sends an automated notification to the student and parent informing them of the unsuccessful transaction and updates the status to 'pending fee payment'.

6. Navigation guide

7. Related links

1. Creating and managing payment workflows
2. Configuring notification actions for payment workflows
3. Configuring data access actions for payment workflows
4. Configuring Deluge script for payment workflows
5. Configuring integration actions for payment workflows