# Why QuickBooks Charges Customers a $25 ACH Fee

> QuickBooks charges your customer a flat $25 convenience fee to pay an invoice by bank transfer when every online payment method on that invoice is switched off and the setting Your customer pays the fee is on. Intuit's own staff say it was on by default for some accounts. Untick it under Settings, Sales, Invoice payments.

- Canonical URL: https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/quickbooks-charging-customers-25-ach-fee
- Author: Om Patel
- Published: 2026-09-28
- Topic: Growth

QuickBooks charges your customer a $25 ACH fee when an invoice goes out with every online payment method switched off and the setting **Your customer pays the fee** switched on. In that state, [Intuit's help page](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/refund-payments/let-customers-pay-invoices-ach-bank-payment-fee/L2pPurNTw_US_en_US) says your customer "can still pay the invoice online using an ACH bank transfer. They'll need to pay an additional $25 convenience fee." You get the invoice amount. Intuit keeps the $25. Your customer thinks you charged it.

Most owners who search this did not choose it. When one owner asked the Intuit Community to reverse a fee they never approved, a QuickBooks Team reply said that "for auto-enabled users, this feature is turned on by default." If you switched off card and bank payments to avoid [QuickBooks Payments fees](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/best-payment-processing-for-contractors), you are exactly the account this lands on.

- **The trigger is all payment methods off.** The $25 option only appears when card, ACH, PayPal and Venmo are all off on the invoice and "Your customer pays the fee" is ticked.
- **It can be on without you choosing it.** Intuit staff confirmed default-on for auto-enabled accounts, and r/QuickBooks owners report finding it switched back on.
- **On small invoices it is brutal.** The floor is $125, where $25 is 20% of the bill. On a $150 invoice it is 16.7%.
- **It never shows in your books.** Intuit leaves the fee out of your accounting, so the first sign is usually a customer's complaint.
- **You cannot refund only the $25.** The refund path reverses the whole payment, after 5 business days.
- **Turning it off takes a minute:** Settings, Account and settings, Sales, Invoice payments, untick "Your customer pays the fee."

## What is the QuickBooks $25 ACH convenience fee?

**It is a flat $25 that QuickBooks adds to your customer's payment when they pay your invoice online by bank transfer on an invoice where you turned off all other online payment methods.** Intuit calls the feature "Your customer pays the fee." The idea, in Intuit's words: "When a customer pays using an ACH bank transfer, they pay a flat convenience fee. When a customer pays using other methods, you pay a percentage-based processing fee."

The rules on Intuit's help page, updated August 11, 2026:

| Rule | What Intuit says |
| --- | --- |
| Fee | $25 flat, paid by the customer |
| Invoice size | "greater than $125 and less than $100,000" |
| Partial payments | "Your customers can't pay partial invoices with an ACH bank transfer" |
| When it applies | Only when card, ACH bank payment, PayPal and Venmo are all off on the invoice |
| If any method is on | "you'll pay the convenience fee" (in practice, the normal processing fee) |
| Deposit timing | Full invoice amount "typically the next business day" |
| Instant Deposit | If you schedule it, you pay the 1.75% Instant Deposit fee on these payments too |
| Your books | The fee is not recorded, "since it doesn't directly impact your accounting" |

Read that last row again. The fee your customer paid does not exist anywhere in your QuickBooks file. That is why it survives for months: the only person who sees it is the one paying it.

## Why it turned on when you never asked for it

**It turns on because the conditions that trigger it are the same conditions careful owners create on purpose: switching off every online payment method to avoid processing fees.** You turned payments off to stop Intuit taking a cut. QuickBooks read "no payment methods" as "offer the $25 one."

Owners describe the same sequence on r/QuickBooks. One posted a [PSA about the fee](https://www.reddit.com/r/QuickBooks/comments/1j96dya/psa_on_quickbooks_sneaky_new_payment_fee/) after checking the setting "a few times over the past couple of months" and finding it off, then noticing that "Accept ACH" had been turned off and "Your customer pays the fee" turned on. Their summary of the customer's view: the option "looks like the fee is coming from you." Another reply in that thread: "Some of our clients got that... and called us. They were NOT real happy!"

A bookkeeper at a checks-only office in [a 55-comment thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/QuickBooks/comments/1upul6f/quickbooks_charging_a_very_high_ach_fee_to_clients/) kept getting emails saying a "client tried to pay through ACH please contact them," and found a "pay by ACH" button she had never added. And in the thread titled [Interfering with my Client Relationships](https://www.reddit.com/r/QuickBooks/comments/1o2evje/quickbooks_interfering_with_my_client/), the owner said support told him the $25 option "can't be turned off if you maintain a merchant account." Intuit's current help page does describe an off switch (below), so try it before accepting that answer, but the fact that support said it tells you how poorly this is understood even inside Intuit.

These are owner reports, not Intuit data. The pattern is consistent enough that you should check your settings today even if you are sure they are right. It is the same kind of quiet change as the [QuickBooks price increase](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/quickbooks-price-increase-2026): nothing breaks, it just costs more.

## What $25 costs your customer on a normal invoice

**A flat $25 is a large percentage on small and mid-sized invoices, and below about $836 it costs your customer more than a card payment would have cost you.** Here is the math using Intuit's own numbers: the $25 fee, and the [QuickBooks payment rates page](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/payments/payment-rates/) (accurate as of September 18, 2026), which lists ACH bank payments at 1% and invoice card payments at 2.99%.

| Invoice | $25 as % of invoice | If you paid 1% ACH | If you paid 2.99% card |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $125 (minimum) | 20.0% | $1.25 | $3.74 |
| $150 | 16.7% | $1.50 | $4.49 |
| $300 | 8.3% | $3.00 | $8.97 |
| $500 | 5.0% | $5.00 | $14.95 |
| $836 | 3.0% | $8.36 | $25.00 |
| $1,000 | 2.5% | $10.00 | $29.90 |
| $2,500 | 1.0% | $25.00 | $74.75 |
| $5,000 | 0.5% | $50.00 | $149.50 |

Two break-even points matter:

- **At $2,500**, the $25 flat fee equals what a 1% ACH fee would have cost you. Below that, your customer pays more than you would have.
- **At about $836**, the $25 equals a 2.99% card fee. Below that, your customer is paying more for a bank transfer than you would have paid Intuit to take their credit card.

That $150 invoice is not hypothetical. An owner in the [Intuit Community](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/community/payments-3/customer-was-charged-a-25-convenience-fee-for-online-payment-new-feature-qb-added-and-turned-on-not-approved-by-me-anyone-able-to-get-this-reversed-20092) posted: "$25 on $150 invoice. Called, got told no, asked for a supervisor and got the run around."

Your [own ACH rate](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/why-am-i-paying-a-percentage-fee-on-ach-payments) may differ from 1%: owners on r/QuickBooks report their own ACH fee capped at $10, and our [payment processing comparison](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/best-payment-processing-for-contractors) covers how Intuit changed ACH pricing for accounts opened after September 2023. Whatever your rate, the $25 comes out of your customer's pocket, not yours, and they rarely know that.

**The fee has already moved once.** In a January 2025 [Intuit Community thread](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/payments/convenience-fee-for-ach-bank-payments/00/1519653), an owner who tested the feature on a $107.75 invoice reported the convenience fee "showed up as $15." Intuit's help page now says $25 and sets a $125 minimum. If you checked this setting a year ago, your old numbers are out of date.

A fee your customer pays and your books never record is the hardest kind to catch. Send us your payment and invoice exports and we will list every fee in the flow, the ones charged to you and the ones charged to your customers, with the setting behind each.

## How to turn off the $25 fee in QuickBooks Online

**Untick "Your customer pays the fee" in your invoice payment settings, then check the invoices you already sent.** Intuit's steps:

1. Go to **Settings**, then **Account and settings**.
2. Select **Sales**.
3. Open **Invoice payments** and uncheck **Your customer pays the fee**. Intuit says "this setting will apply to all invoices you send."
4. Select **Save** or **Done**.

Then clean up what is already out:

- **Open two or three unpaid invoices**, select **Manage**, then **Payment options**, and confirm the convenience fee option is off. Payment options are set per invoice, so an invoice sent before you changed the setting may still carry the old options. Resend any that do.
- **Add payment instructions.** Intuit suggests adding "a comment in the Payment instructions field or in the email body" if you prefer a particular payment method. Tell customers exactly how to pay you without a fee: cheque, your bank's ACH details, or a payment link you control.
- **Look again next month.** Owners report the setting changing without notice, so put a recurring reminder on the first invoice run of each month.

### Pick what replaces it

Turning the fee off leaves you with a decision: what happens when a customer wants to pay online?

| Option | Who pays | Trade-off |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Turn on QuickBooks ACH only | You, at your ACH rate (1% on Intuit's rate page) | Cheap on small invoices, expensive on big ones unless your account has a cap |
| Turn on ACH plus cards | You | Customers pay how they like; you pay 2.99% on card invoices |
| Surcharge cards or ACH | Customer, at rates QuickBooks sets | Legal limits apply; blocks debit, Amex, Discover and Apple Pay; cannot be combined with the convenience fee |
| All methods off, fee off | Nobody | Customers pay by cheque or your bank details; slower, but no fee to anyone |
| Pay outside QuickBooks | Depends on the provider | Bank ACH, a capped processor or Zelle; you record the payment manually or via integration |

On the surcharge row, Intuit's [surcharge help article](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/process-credit-card-payments/add-surcharge-customer-invoice-payments-quickbooks/L6Sg9UWf9_US_en_US) is explicit: "You can only have the surcharge OR the convenience fee turned on for ACH bank transfers," and "QuickBooks sets fixed surcharge rates. You can't set custom rates." It also says surcharging "is not permitted in all states," so check your state before you switch it on.

One r/QuickBooks commenter summed up the gap owners actually want filled: "QB ACH will charge us 1% but won't let us pass along the fee automatically to the customer. It resorts to $25 flat fee which is insane. So either we eat the fee or manually input 1% into each invoice individually." That is the real choice most small businesses face, and the answer depends on your average invoice size, which is why the table above matters more than the setting.

## A customer already paid it: how to make it right

**You cannot refund only the $25; you can refund the whole payment and re-collect the invoice, or make the customer whole yourself.** The QuickBooks Team reply in the Intuit Community is direct: "Currently, there is no direct option to reverse only the convenience fee," and the refund process "will refund both the fee and the entire transaction."

Intuit's [refund article for convenience-fee payments](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/refund-payments/refund-ach-transaction-convenience-fee/L8HbS4wj3_US_en_US) sets the rules:

- **Same day:** a refund submitted the same day is treated as a void. Intuit's [void and refund article](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/incorrect-transactions/understand-fees-refunds-void-transactions/L3B12Cs0Z_US_en_US) says daily batches close at 3:00 PM PT.
- **Otherwise:** submit an e-check refund in the Merchant Service Center "once 5 business days have passed" (Settings, Account and settings, Payments, Manage account, then Processing Tools, Refund an eCheck).
- **Your books:** "When you refund a transaction from the Merchant Service Center, it doesn't update your accounting." You have to create a refund receipt yourself and match it to the bank transaction.

So your realistic options are:

1. **Full refund, then re-invoice** with the fee off. Clean for the customer, but you give back money you already have and wait to be paid again, and you have two extra transactions to reconcile.
2. **Credit the $25 on their next invoice** or send it back by cheque. Faster and keeps the payment in place. Record it as a discount or a customer goodwill expense so your books stay honest.
3. **Call the customer first either way.** The damage here is trust, not $25. Tell them it was a QuickBooks setting, that you did not receive the fee, and what you did about it. A commenter in the client relationships thread wrote that "a bunch of my clients thought I received" the fee.

If a customer underpaid by $25 to "cancel out" the fee, treat it the way you would any [short-paid invoice](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/customer-short-paid-the-final-invoice): write it off deliberately with a note, rather than leaving a $25 balance aging in your receivables.

## The 10 minute check: did your customers pay it?

**Because the fee is not in your books, you have to look where it does show: the Merchant Service Center, your invoice payment settings, and your customers.** Run this once, today.

1. **Settings check (1 minute).** Settings, Account and settings, Sales, Invoice payments. Is "Your customer pays the fee" ticked? Are all payment methods off? If both are yes, every eligible invoice you sent was carrying the $25 option.
2. **Invoice check (2 minutes).** Open your three most recent invoices over $125, select Manage, then Payment options. Note what each one allowed.
3. **Payment check (5 minutes).** In the Merchant Service Center, search e-check transactions for the last 6 to 12 months. Every one of those came through QuickBooks Payments. If your payment methods were all off at the time, any online bank payment that went through was most likely a $25 convenience fee payment.
4. **Customer check (2 minutes).** Count those payments and multiply by $25. That number is what your customers paid Intuit to pay you.

Then decide what to do with the list: refund, credit, or a short note to each customer. Most owners find a handful, not hundreds, but the handful are often your regular customers who pay online every month.

This kind of fee is one of the easier [money leaks](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/where-is-my-small-business-losing-money) to miss, because nothing in your profit and loss changes. It looks like revenue arriving on time.

Found convenience fee payments in step 3? That usually means the invoice payment setup was never deliberately chosen. We read your QuickBooks Payments and bank exports, show what each payment method actually costs at your invoice sizes, and hand you a written list of what to change. No logins needed.

## Should you ever leave it on?

**Only if you chose it, you tell customers before they pay, and your invoices are large enough that $25 is a small percentage.** Some accountants use it on purpose. On the Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, one ProAdvisor described [turning off all payment methods](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncyVW7rNET8) so the "your customer pays the fees" option appeared, then writing in the invoice email that clients were "welcome to pay this yourself" or could call with updated card details to avoid the fee. She said she got three phone calls from clients updating their information.

That is the difference: she told them, and she gave them a free way to pay. The complaints on r/QuickBooks and the Intuit feedback forum come from customers who were not told. One payer wrote on Intuit's feedback site that "at no point did INTUIT tell me they were going to charge me a convenience fee."

If you leave it on:

- **Say it in the invoice email** before the payment link: paying online by bank transfer adds a $25 fee charged by the payment provider, and here is how to pay without it.
- **Keep it off for small invoices.** At $300 the fee is 8.3% of the bill. Turn it off per invoice in the Manage panel.
- **Remember partial payments are blocked.** Customers on payment plans or [progress billing](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/progress-payment-schedule) cannot use it for a deposit or an instalment.

## Cheaper ways to take bank payments

**The cheapest options are usually your own bank's ACH, a processor with a capped ACH fee, or simply sending the invoice yourself.** Owners in the threads above describe the routes they moved to:

- **Your bank's ACH receiving.** One r/QuickBooks commenter said their bank charges "$25/month for ~40 incoming ACH transfers. Then its $.40/transfer after that." That is one owner's bank; ask yours what incoming ACH costs, since pricing varies a lot.
- **Email the PDF yourself.** The top-voted reply in the client relationships thread: "I save the invoice as pdf in the client file and email the client myself, with the pdf attached. It's the only way to avoid Intuit inserting itself into the transaction." You lose the pay link, but you control what the customer sees.
- **A capped processor.** For large invoices, a provider that caps ACH fees beats both 1% and $25. The [fee comparison](https://www.pavadotech.com/fees) lists what the main processors publish.
- **Zelle for small invoices.** Two commenters in the 55-comment thread moved customers to Zelle. Check your bank's business limits first.

Any route outside QuickBooks Payments means someone records the payment by hand or through an integration. If that is the part putting you off, it is worth knowing which bookkeeping steps [you can automate](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/what-can-i-automate-in-my-small-business) before you decide. And if fees like this are one more reason on a long list, weigh the [QuickBooks alternatives](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/quickbooks-alternatives-for-contractors) properly, or read how to [cancel QuickBooks](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/how-to-cancel-quickbooks-subscription) without losing your data.

## Can someone just do this for me?

**The setting itself is a one-minute fix you should do yourself right now.** Untick the box, check your recent invoices, add payment instructions. No one needs to be paid for that.

The part that takes time is the decision behind it: which payment method each customer should use at your invoice sizes, whether a capped processor or bank ACH would save more than the 1% you avoid, and how many customers already paid the $25. That means pulling a year of payments, sorting them by size and method, and doing the table above with your own numbers. It is the same work behind getting [paid faster](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/how-to-get-paid-faster-as-a-contractor), and it is worth an afternoon if you invoice more than a few dozen customers a month. Below that, turn the fee off, send the three or four affected customers a note, and move on. For more on the payments side, the [getting paid hub](https://www.pavadotech.com/blog/topic/getting-paid) collects every guide we have on invoices, deposits and fees.

## FAQ

### Why is QuickBooks charging my customers a $25 fee?

Because your invoice went out with every online payment method turned off while the setting Your customer pays the fee was on. In that state QuickBooks still offers the customer a bank transfer, and Intuit's help page says they pay an additional $25 convenience fee. Intuit staff told one owner the feature was turned on by default for auto-enabled accounts.

### How do I turn off the QuickBooks $25 convenience fee?

Go to Settings, then Account and settings, then Sales, then Invoice payments, and uncheck Your customer pays the fee. Intuit says the setting applies to all invoices you send. Check any invoices already sent, because payment options are also set on each invoice, and resend the unpaid ones.

### Does the business get any of the $25?

No. Intuit says you receive the full invoice amount, typically the next business day, and the convenience fee is left out of your books because it does not directly impact your accounting. That is also why most owners never see it: it only shows on the customer's side.

### Can I refund just the $25 to my customer?

Not directly. A QuickBooks Team reply in the Intuit Community says there is no direct option to reverse only the convenience fee. The refund route refunds the whole payment and the fee, through the Merchant Service Center, after 5 business days unless you void it the same day. You then collect the invoice again another way.

### Is the $25 fee charged on every invoice?

No. Intuit says the bank payment with a convenience fee is only available on invoices greater than $125 and less than $100,000, and customers cannot use it to pay part of an invoice. If you send an invoice with any payment option turned on, Intuit's help page says you will pay the convenience fee instead of the customer, which in practice means your normal processing rate applies.

### Is $25 more than QuickBooks charges me for ACH?

Usually. Intuit's rate page, accurate as of September 18, 2026, lists ACH bank payments at 1%, which only reaches $25 on a $2,500 invoice. Below about $836, the $25 is even more than a 2.99% card payment would have cost you.

### Can I charge the customer both a surcharge and the convenience fee?

No. Intuit's surcharge help article says you can only have the surcharge or the convenience fee turned on for ACH bank transfers, because card network rules and state regulations do not permit both on one transaction. Surcharging also blocks debit cards, Amex, Discover and Apple Pay on that invoice.

### My customer says they were charged $25 but I never turned anything on. What happened?

Owners on r/QuickBooks report the same thing: the setting appeared switched on after they had checked it was off. Open Settings, Sales, Invoice payments and look at the box, then open a recent invoice's Manage panel and check its payment options. Fix both, then tell the customer what happened before they assume the fee was yours.