10 Ways to Automate Stripe with Zapier to Improve Your Business Operations, Fast

When you choose Stripe as your payment processor, you get a lot more than just a processing service. Stripe was designed to be developer-friendly and make accepting payments a breeze, including having native mobile apps and an online web presence that offers customer-facing access, and more. Stripe also has an impressive suite of APIs to help power your commerce, and when you automate it with the power of Zapier, you’re going to take things to a whole new level. 

You no longer have to spend hours checking Stripe for new orders or information, transferring data between apps, and taking care of other tedious work. Now, Zapier will turn it all into automated workflows and allow your team to get their focus back to where it belongs. No matter what industry you’re in, there’s no reason anyone should be spending countless hours on admin tasks like invoicing, payment processing, and online billing. 

Fortunately, with the power of Zapier and Stripe, you don’t have to. You can easily track everything, set up workflows so that everything happens behind the scenes, and improve your business operations in several different ways. Automation is changing the game and you’ll love all that it can do to make your payment processing and billing management easier than ever before. 

What is Zapier, you ask? It’s an entire tool built for a single purpose: automation. With Zapier, you will be able to integrate with more than 3,000 apps and tools, including Stripe, to build automations and custom workflows so that AI can do more of the work and your team can enjoy more time doing other things. Whether it’s streamlining billing and invoices or even just managing contacts, these two have a lot to offer when you combine them with the other tools in your tech stack. 

Before we get to the automations, though, let’s talk a little more about the benefits of using Zapier (and if you want to boost the benefits of Zapier even further, ask about a partnership with the virtual receptionists at Smith.ai).

Automation is the way

It’s easy to focus on the “perks” of automation and the fact that it can offer improvements for your business. What some people don’t consider, though, is that automation is a must-have for any business that is going to succeed in the modern world. Without it, companies will not have the time or labor resources to get things done efficiently and there will be a lot of unnecessary work taking place. Your team has better things to do than micromanage the details. Why not leave that to the technology and get back to business once and for all?

If you choose to embrace the power of Zapier to automate various aspects of your payment processing with Stripe, you can enjoy:

• Easy payment and order tracking via spreadsheets and other apps

• Simple communication with notifications and contact sharing between apps

• Total contact management

• Notifications via email, text, Slack, and other channels or platforms

• Hands-free payment processing and invoicing

• Custom receipt generation based on client or customer preference

• Less time spent on tedious work

• Better management of your finances and payment processing overall 

Automation is changing the future of every business. It's about getting on board, and it’s about time. You can no longer afford to sit around and wonder if automation is the right move—it is. Now, it’s time to develop a strategy and get started on figuring out just how you can put AI to work to help your business run more efficiently and garner better profits from less work. 

When you put automation to work, you will save money and workforce resources (AKA labor). You’ll also be able to standardize processes, reduce the risk of errors, and enjoy better compliance in all areas where automation is being implemented. You’ll also have a happier team because they’re not drowning in the details of busywork and can spend time taking care of clients or customers. Stripe has a lot of features of its own that offer streamlined, automated solutions for payment processing but when you add the power of Zapier, it just gets better. 

Speaking of which, let’s take a look at what Stripe and Zapier can do together. In the list below, you’ll see some of the leading automations for these two tools. 

1. Add new sales from Stripe to Google Sheets    

With this workflow, you can track all of your Stripe transactions right on a Google Sheet, making it easy for you to keep things organized. Whether you’re just monitoring sales, or you want a record of all of your transactions, or even if you’re trying to create some data for metrics that you can use, Sheets offers what you need. Simply set the trigger in place and when a sale happens in Stripe, it will automatically be transferred to the correct Sheets row based on the rules you choose. Then, you’ll never have to have someone transferring the details by hand. 

2. Create Slack notifications for Stripe sales    

Keeping your team informed is a big part of collaboration. Whether you’re a remote team or have an in-house staff, tools like Slack are going to revolutionize the way that you communicate. Slack makes it easy to keep in touch and create notifications to ensure the team is on the same page. This workflow allows you to set a trigger so that when a sale occurs in Stripe or a payment is processed, your team will be notified via Slack. You can choose to message specific people or even post to a channel, making sure that the next step happens seamlessly and saving everyone time and hassle. 

3. Add customers from Stripe to Mailchimp subscriber lists    

Automating contact transfers is going to revolutionize your free time. This is one area of business where AI can come in handy. There's no reason for your team to be spending countless hours on data entry and subscribing people to mailings. Some tools can do it all for you, including this integration from Zapier. Anytime a customer is added or modified in Stripe, this workflow will trigger their information to be added to the appropriate Mailchimp list so that they can start getting emails right away. Plus, it all happens behind the scenes while you’re taking care of other things. 

4. Add or update contacts in ActiveCampaign with new Stripe transactions    

ActiveCampaign is a great platform to manage your marketing campaigns and CRM details. It offers all kinds of tools and features of its own and you can combine it with the power of Zapier to automate and streamline even more. This particular automation makes it so that you can transfer all of your Stripe contacts into ActiveCampaign without having to do the work. Set it up and when a transaction occurs on Stripe, the contact information will be added to or updated in your AC database. This saves your team the trouble and keeps information organized across platforms. 

5. Create new QuickBooks Online customers and receipts for Stripe payments    

If you use QuickBooks Online, you already have a great billing and accounting tool on your hands. Add to it with the power of Zapier and see what happens. Stripe makes integration easy, and this workflow will ensure that every Stripe receipt is turned into a customer or receipt in QB, based on the parameters that you set forth. This will ensure that all of your accounting is streamlined without having to get your hands dirty and you’ll know that your books are in order even though you’re not doing the work. 

6. Send Gmail alerts for new Stripe transactions or other events     

Staying on top of billing is important, but it’s hard to do if you’re expected to sit around and wait all day for payments to come in. You don’t have that kind of time, and you shouldn’t have to. With automation, you can set up notifications so that all Stripe events, including transactions, are shared with you or the appropriate members of your team. Whenever something happens in Stripe, Zapier will trigger Gmail to create the notification based on the rules you set, and you’ll never miss a beat. 

7. Create invoices in Xero for Stripe charges and payments    

Xero is one of the most popular billing and invoicing tools available today. There are several different ways that you can put this platform to work to keep your accounting in line and automating it with Zapier just makes everything easier. If you’re using Stripe alongside Xero, this workflow is for you. Just set it up and when a Stripe charge occurs, Zapier will send an automation to Xero to generate an invoice for that payment. You can even take it one step further and add a workflow that sends the invoice to the customer and copies you, streamlining every aspect of invoicing. 

8. Create or update contacts in HubSpot from Stripe customers    

Again, this workflow is all about streamlining data transfers. With Zapier, you can take any and all Stripe customers and transactions and put them right into HubSpot as contacts. Plus, you don’t have to do the work yourself. Just set up the workflow with the rules that you choose and when you take a payment in Stripe, the customer info will be sent right to HubSpot so that you don’t have to do the detail work and still have all the streamlined information that you need. 

9. Add Stripe transactions to Airtable records   

Airtable is a great tool for creating and managing dynamic databases, offering more than the average spreadsheet for your tracking needs. With Zapier, you can automate a lot of basic tasks and Airtable records transfers, including with your Stripe transactions. Just set the workflow in motion and whenever a sale occurs through Stripe, Zapier will have a record generated in Airtable based on the rules that you set forth.   

10. Send SMS notifications for Stripe charges    

With SMS by Zapier, you can make sure that the right people always know when you get paid. An SMS notification is a great way to inform you or anyone else on your team not only that there has been a sale, but that the next step in the customer journey needs to begin. The SMS option also makes it easy for people to get notifications on the go even when they might not be able to get push notifications or email notifications. Just set the workflow in place and then watch as every Stripe charge generates an SMS message. 

Take operations even further with Smith.ai by your side

We love automation at Smith.ai. Our team of dedicated virtual receptionists know all about the latest and greatest tools on the market today and we thrive on being part of making your business better. When you hire us, you’re hiring the face of your company that can handle all kinds of customer needs, from after-hours answering to live website chat and even new client intake. Plus, we’ll help you come up with the perfect strategy to field those needs, regardless of what yours might be. 

Zapier is one of our favorites for a lot of reasons, but the fact that it makes it so simple to create smart workflows between the software tools that you use allows you to get so much more out of your business than ever before. And, thanks to Zapier, Smith.ai can also integrate with more than 3,000 apps so that every single call, text, and chat that we field for you is logged in your tech stack, whether that’s a CRM, lead gen platform, or anything else. 

Check out all the apps that we can connect with and explore how we use Zapier! Learn more about Smith.ai’s Answering Service app on Zapier, and explore Smith.ai’s Website Chat app on Zapier.

And, when you schedule a consultation, you can learn all about our 24/7 phone and chat answering services to handle scheduling, overflow calls, after-hours answering, and so much more. You'll also find us at hello@smith.ai or (650) 727-6484.