The problem
Stuck at $50K
Divine Design Center specializes in high-end interior design and construction projects, often involving contracts worth $100,000 or more with multiple payment milestones. As Caralyn, the company's bookkeeper and finance lead, managed increasingly complex payment workflows, she found herself constrained by QuickBooks' payment limitations.
We were not accepting credit cards because it was hard to figure out because QuickBooks removes the amount of the fee from your payment," Caralyn explained. When she tried to work around this, she had to manually add fees to invoices: "I was adding it on so that way the customer was paying for it. I then had to re-edit the invoice.
You couldn't send an electronic payment or invoice for over $50,000. I would have to split up a $100,000 invoice into three invoices.
Caralyn, Director of Logistics and Finance
Meanwhile, costs were climbing. QuickBooks charged around $2 per payment plus expensive add-on features. "QuickBooks was starting to get very expensive. It's a whole entire add-on feature," Caralyn noted, "and they go up every year."
The result was a constant stream of customer inquiries and a cumbersome workflow that didn't match the company's premium service standards.
The solution
Cards, unlimited
When co-founder Magued discovered Nickel, Divine Design Center decided to give it a try. The transformation was immediate. Suddenly, accepting credit cards went from impossible to effortless, large luxury invoices no longer needed splitting and the mounting QuickBooks fees stopped.
Nickel eliminated the complexity that had prevented Divine Design Center from accepting credit cards. Now, 25% of customers pay by credit card, compared to 0% before.
The fee structure became transparent for customers. "It's very straightforward that they see they pay the fee," Caralyn explained, eliminating the need for manual calculations and invoice edits.
Nickel removed the $50,000 payment limits that had plagued Divine Design Center's workflow. "Now, I just send it for whatever the amount is," Caralyn said. This eliminated the need to split large invoices into multiple payments, streamlining both the administrative process and the customer experience.
Rather than replacing their entire system, Nickel integrated with Divine Design Center's existing QuickBooks workflow. "There was already a link to show how to pay it through QuickBooks. We just changed that link now to be the Nickel link," Caralyn explained. "I literally copy the link out of Nickel and then just change it in, and I just edit the hyperlink."
This approach saved thousands in QuickBooks add-on costs while maintaining the familiar invoice format customers expected. "Most people want it," Caralyn noted about the QuickBooks invoice format, so the integration preserved customer preference while adding payment flexibility.
Nickel's dual notification system gives Divine Design Center complete payment visibility. "I get a notification that someone paid and then a notification when we get paid, it shows up in the bank," Caralyn said. Unlike QuickBooks' lump-sum deposits, "Nickel tells me in the bank you got $15,000 from this person. You got $7,000 from this person."
When payments fail, immediate notifications enable quick resolution. "When a payment doesn't go through, getting that notification right away is very helpful. Sometimes people type in the wrong account number."
