Teachable is an online platform, known as a learning management system, that allows people to create and sell their own online courses.
It allows people who have specific or expert knowledge in any area to transform knowledge into a form of income. Teachable is one of the most popular learning management systems in the industry. But, how do you get paid on Teachable?
This is largely thanks to the intuitive and easy-to-use interface the platform is known for. Teachable is an excellent option for beginners in creating online courses and coaching programs.
One of the most important things that you need to know about the platform before you start creating your own course is how to get paid through Teachable.
In this article, we will look at how you can get paid through the platform and what the payment gateways system is.
What Are Teachable Payment Gateways?
One of the most important things that you need to learn when you are researching whether Teachable is the right platform for your course or coaching program, is the payment gateways. Check out ‘Teachable Free Plan – What Does It Offer?‘)
If you have looked on any of the Teachable web pages, you will have likely come across the term payment gateway.
This phrase is used to describe the methods through which course creators can receive money earned through Teachable.
Although the phrasing might seem needlessly complicated or confusing, the concept is incredibly simple.
The payment gateways offer a gateway for the money you earn to leave your Teachable account and enter your bank account.
Teachable Payment Gateway Options
Through the Teachable platform, there are a total of three different payment gateway options. Two of the gateway options available are considered to be Teachable’s native payment gateways.
These are gateways that are maintained in-house. There is also an external payment gateway option that can be used.
Teachable:Pay
The first payment gateway is known as Teachable:Pay. This is a payment method that is available to members who reside in certain countries.
There are many countries that are eligible for this particular payment gateway.
The countries include the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany, Gambia, Australia, Argentina, Italy, France, Singapore, South Africa, and the Netherlands among others.
An exhaustive list of the countries that are eligible for Teachable:Pay is available on the Teachable website.
If you do not reside in one of the countries that are listed as being eligible for Teachable:Pay, this gateway will be inaccessible to you. You will need to choose from one of the other payment gateways that Teachable offers.
When you use the Teachable:Pay gateway, there are three payment options that your students can choose from in order to pay for your courses.
Credit and debit cards can be used to pay through the Teachable:Pay gateway. This method can also accept Paypal payments from students.
Finally, Google and Apple Pay can both be used to pay for access to Teachable courses with this gateway.
Monthly Payment Gateway
If you reside outside of the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada, and your country isn’t on the list of countries that are eligible for Teachable:Pay, this is the gateway that can work for you.
The monthly payment gateway from Teachable is facilitated by Stripe and it is available for credit and debit card payments.
This is a common choice for many people who use Teachable as it is a payment gateway that many business owners are already familiar with.
However, it is important to note that Teachable states a new account needs to be created, even if you already have a Stripe account.
When you are using the monthly payment gateway, there are three ways in which you can receive payments from your students, the same as with the Teachable:Pay gateway.
Credit and debit cards can be accepted this way. It is also possible to receive payments from Paypal if the transaction is in USD and through Apple or Google Pay. This gives your students plenty of options for payments.
Custom Payment Gateway
The final payment gateway option offered by Teachable is the custom payment gateway. This is a gateway that is essentially set up independently of Teachable.
You can set up payments directly from platforms such as Paypal or Stripe. This can be a preferential method if you are someone who prefers to be entirely in control of your finances and the associated paperwork.
With this payment gateway, there are a couple of ways in which you can receive payments from potential students. Whether you use Paypal or Stripe, you can receive payments via credit and debit cards.
If you choose to use Paypal as your payment gateway, you can use Paypal to receive payments too.
The regularity of these payments will vary depending on how you have set up your custom payment gateway.
Setting Up Teachable:Pay
If Teachable:Pay sounds like the right payment gateway for you, it is really simple to set it up on your Teachable account.
The Teachable:Pay uses Stripe Express in order to facilitate the payments on Teachable and transfer of funds with credit and debit cards. See also ‘11 Teachable Alternatives You Should Know About.‘)
As we mentioned above, if you have already got a Stripe account that you use for your other business payments, this cannot be used to set up Teachable:Pay.
If you wish to use this as a payment gateway, you will need to create another Stripe account which you can link to your Teachable account. Once you have created your new account, you can begin to set up your Teachable:Pay.
The first thing that you need to do is log into your Teachable school or account.
Once you have done this, go to the school admin tab and select settings then payments from the menu that you see. This will cause a drop-down menu.
From the drop-down menu, you will need to select the country you currently reside and hold a bank account in.
If the country that you select is one of the many that are eligible for Teachable:Pay, you can move on to the next step. (If your country is not eligible, you will be prompted to continue setting up a different gateway).
You will be prompted to enter your phone number and then select set up Teachable:Pay. This will begin your payments onboarding process.
You will be presented with a form that is required to be completed. On this form, you will have to provide information about your business, annual income, tax filing status, and so on.
Once you have completed the tax information form, you will be redirected to the Stripe interface where you will be able to finish the setup of your Stripe Express account registration.
Once you have completed all of the steps required by Stripe, you will automatically be redirected back to the Teachable platform.
Now you will need to select how often you want to receive payouts from your Teachable account. You can choose from daily, weekly, or monthly payouts.
It can also be useful at this point to enroll in BackOffice. We will look into what this is and how it can be beneficial below.
The final step in setting up Teachable:Pay is to select Paypal as a means of payment option for your potential students.
Payouts On Teachable:Pay
When you set up your Teachable:Pay account, you will be prompted to select a frequency of payout from three options. You can choose daily payouts, weekly payouts, or monthly payouts.
From the point of your first sale on the Teachable platform, it will take between 7 and 14 days to receive your first payout. Any subsequent payouts will happen in accordance with the schedule that you have selected.
The payouts will be made directly into your chosen bank account.
This is often preferable to the monthly payment gateway payout system as it cuts out an extra middle man and there is no extra time spent waiting for funds to be transferred from a third-party site to your bank account.
Setting Up Monthly Payment Gateway
If you began the process of setting up Teachable:Pay and found that your country wasn’t eligible for the scheme when you reached that stage, you will have been prompted to set up a monthly payment gateway instead.
To begin setting up your monthly payment gateway, you will need to follow the first few steps that were outlined above up to the point of selecting your country of residence.
Setting up a monthly payment gateway with Teachable is much more straightforward than setting up Teachable:Pay as there is no need to be directed to other sites and platforms during the process.
The first step is to provide the email address that is linked to your Paypal account. If you don’t already have a Paypal account, you will need to set one up to continue with this payment gateway setup.
Once you have provided your Paypal email address, you will be asked to provide information on your tax filing status.
It is important to provide all the information that you can to help speed the process along. It is also important to make sure that the information that you are providing is up-to-date and accurate.
At this point, you will be asked to enable or disable BackOffice. We will cover BackOffice and its role in Teachable further down in this article.
Once you have sorted out BackOffice, you will need to share your course information with the Teachable platform. Now you are ready to go with the monthly payment gateway.
Payouts On Monthly Payment Gateway
As the name suggests, you will receive payouts on a monthly schedule with this particular payment gateway.
The payments will be released to your Paypal account in USD on the first of every month. Funds will be released the next business day if the first happens to fall on a weekend or US holiday.
Teachable runs with a 30-day refund policy for all courses offered through the platform.
This means that, for example, if you make a sale in January, you will receive the funds from that sale on the 1st of March, sales from February will be sent on the 1st of April, and so on.
This can create a more stable and comfortable payout system for many people. However, the first couple of months can be difficult if you are using your Teachable courses as a main source of income.
With the monthly payment gateway, payouts will be made straight into your Paypal account. You will then have to wait for the allotted time that Paypal takes to transfer those funds to your bank account.
Custom Payment Gateway
There is also the option of setting up a custom payment gateway with the Teachable platform. This means that you can set up a payment gateway directly with a provider such as Paypal or Stripe.
This gets rid of the middleman that is Teachable and can make your payments come through sooner or on a different schedule.
Setting up a custom payment gateway on Teachable is slightly different from the other payment gateways. There is no internal system for setting up this payment method.
You will need to begin setting it up directly with the provider you prefer, either Paypal or Stripe.
If you have any issues with payment schedules or payout amounts, you will need to take this up directly with the third-party provider rather than Teachable themselves.
On the plus side, with a custom payment gateway, you are in complete control of your payment schedule and the payout method that you use.
Your Teachable payments will be made into either your Paypal or Stripe account depending on which you have chosen.
You will then need to transfer the money from this account into your bank account if that is where you want it to end up. This can add an additional waiting time to your payouts.
Payment Options For Students
When you set up your Teachable account, you can upload a variety of courses, coaching products, and bundles on your school site.
As the owner of these products, you are free to set any price for your courses that you wish through the pricing tab.
You can also set multiple payment options for a single product. This gives your students the option to select the payment option that works best for them.
When a student navigates to the checkout page on your Teachable school, they will be shown the various payment options available.
The various options that are displayed will depend on the settings that you have made for your school and payment gateway.
Student payment options that can be offered are credit or debit card payments, Apple Pay and Google Pay, Paypal, or Stripe.
Payout Breakdown
As with any source of income, it is important to make sure that you understand the amount of money you are receiving and where it has come from.
Thankfully, Teachable:Pay offers a payout breakdown to help you check your payouts and ensure that they are correct.
To access the payment breakdown on the Teachable site, click on the settings button then payments. On this page, you will see a button that says view payout dashboard.
Clicking on this button will provide you with a general overview of the payouts that you have received and can expect to receive.
You can also view a more detailed breakdown from this page by clicking on sales and then payout.
From this page, you will be able to see details of the dates, status, bank/card, and earnings.
If you are looking for a specific payout that you want to clarify or query, you can use the filter option at the top of the page to search by specific dates.
From here, you can also export a CSV file. Each payout can be further broken down into specific sales that were made. This can help you keep track of all of your sales, transactions, and refunds.
Payout Schedule
As we have mentioned briefly above, there are multiple different payment schedules that you can choose from with Teachable. Below is a breakdown of how each payment schedule works.
Daily
A daily payment schedule is the most frequent payment schedule that you can choose. Your earnings and unlocked reserves from Teachable will be distributed to your bank account or Paypal on a daily basis.
However, transactions will be processed on a 2-business-day rolling basis. This means that any sales that you make on a Tuesday will be paid out to your account on the Thursday of the same week.
If you make sales on a Friday, you will receive a payout by Tuesday of the following week.
Weekly
If you opt for the weekly payment schedule, you will receive funds in your bank account or your third-party provider account on Thursday of each week.
This day will always be the same no matter when you made your sales the week before or when you set up your account. Thursday is the day that Teachable has chosen to release funds.
Monthly
If you have opted for a monthly payment schedule or are using the monthly payment gateway, you will receive funds on the first day of each month.
This day will alter slightly when the 1st falls on a weekend or a US holiday. The funds are released two months in arrears. This means that sales made in January won’t be received until the 1st of March as stated above.
Teachable Reserves
Teachable holds a 10% reserve from card transactions after all processing fees and commissions have been paid. This is to help avoid negative balances on your account that can result from refunds and chargebacks.
These reserves will be paid out roughly 45 days after a transaction takes place. The funds will then be released in accordance with your chosen payment schedule.
The 45-day reserve period is the result of Teachable’s 30-day refund policy. It is possible to check when held reserves will be released on your payout breakdown page. You can also export a CSV file for your reserve payouts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is BackOffice?
BackOffice is a service that is offered by Teachable to assist you in the ethical running of your online school.
If you have set up Teachable:Pay or the monthly payment gateway through Teachable, you can set up BackOffice for a 2%-per-transaction fee.
If you are eligible and choose to set up BackOffice, you will be allowed access to services that include automatic author and affiliate payouts, automated affiliate and author tax form collection, and Paypal as a course payment option.
BackOffice isn’t available for people who have chosen a custom payment gateway.
If you have chosen this option, you will be solely responsible for ensuring that anyone who contributed to your online course or coaching products is compensated for each sale made.
You will also need to ensure that the correct tax forms have been collected.
BackOffice isn’t necessary if you choose the Teachable:Pay or monthly payment gateway option.
You are free to choose whether you want to activate this service or manually sort out taxes and payments for anyone who helped contribute to your products.
If you have made all of your content and resources yourself, there is no need to set up BackOffice as you will not need it.
However, if you have used the input of other authors or products, you will need to appropriately credit them and compensate them.
This is made much easier with the use of BackOffice and can be well worth the 2% transaction fee.
Final Thoughts
Getting paid on Teachable is a super easy process and the multiple payment gateway options allow creators from all over the world to sell their course and coaching product easily and efficiently.
Once you have set up your payment gateway with Teachable, you will be able to automatically collect payments from sales which makes it wonderfully hands-off.
