Generating Your Stripe API Keys

With the WP-CRM System Invoicing extension, you can now send invoices to clients directly through WP-CRM System. Even better, you can also accept payments directly on your website if you have a Stripe account.

In order to accept payments in WP-CRM System Invoicing you will need to find your account’s API keys. There are two keys that are required to be entered in order for a payment to be processed successfully, a secret key and a publishable key. This documentation will show you how to find both.

Generating your Secret and Publishable Keys in Stripe #

• Log in to your Stripe dashboard.
• Click your account name in the top left.
• Click API in the left menu.
• Your secret and publishable keys should be on this page.
  • Note: You may be prompted to enter your password to receive the secret key

Your account will have two sets of API keys – Live and Test. In order to get access to both of them, you will need to use the toggle switch in the left menu that says “View test data”. Clicking that switch will toggle between the live and test keys.

You can tell the difference between the two types of keys by looking at the first part of the keys.

Live keys will start with pk_ and sk_. The pk_ keys are the publishable keys. The sk_keys are the secret keys.

Test keys will start with pk_test_ and sk_test_.

The pk_ keys are the publishable keys. The sk_keys are the secret keys.

Inserting your Keys in WP-CRM System Invoicing #

In WP-CRM System you can enter your secret and publishable keys so that you can start accepting payments through Stripe.

• Navigate to WP-CRM System > Settings, then click the Invoicing tab at the top.
• Here you can set various defaults for your invoices, as well as Stripe-specific information.
• Enter your publishable and secret keys in the correct box.

Test and Live API Keys in Stripe #

You will notice that there are two sets of secret and publishable keys. There is a test set of keys and a live set. The test keys can be used to run test transactions to make sure the system is working correctly and communicating with your Stripe account the way it should be. Fortunately, this lets you test the setup without actually charging a credit card as Stripe provides credit card numbers to use for testing purposes. There are specific card numbers to use for specific scenarios that you may want to test (i.e. charge accepted, card declined, etc.). When in the test mode you can use any CVC number and expiration date.

When you are done testing you will need to change both of the keys in the WP-CRM System to the live secret and live publishable keys in order for payments to actually be processed.

In your Stripe dashboard, you can toggle between displaying live and test data using the switch on the left side of your dashboard.