Connect Stripe and take your first payment

CampRunner takes tuition through Stripe. Payments go straight from families to your camp’s own Stripe account and on to your bank, and CampRunner never holds your money. Only the camp owner can connect Stripe.

Before you start

You need a Stripe account in your camp’s legal name. If you don’t have one, create it at Stripe first: it asks for your camp’s legal name, tax ID (EIN), a bank account for payouts, and details about the person who controls the business, so it can verify your camp.

Connect your account

1. In CampRunner, open Finance, then Payment Processing, and select Start setup.
2. In a new tab, open your Stripe Dashboard’s API keys page. The setup window has a button that takes you there.
3. Copy your publishable key (it starts with pk_live_) into CampRunner.
4. Copy your secret key (it starts with sk_live_) into CampRunner. CampRunner checks it with Stripe and stores it on the server. It never reaches a family’s browser.
5. CampRunner sets up the connection Stripe uses to tell it about payments, then shows You’re all set.

Take your first payment

Once Stripe is connected and registration is open, families pay at checkout when they register. Each payment shows on the family’s ledger and in Finance, under Transactions, as soon as Stripe confirms it. Use live keys only: CampRunner does not accept Stripe test keys, so every payment is real money.

If you need to stop taking payments for a while, use the Pause new payments switch on Payment Processing. Your keys stay in place and you can resume at any time.