Two fees can come out of a payment: Stripe's processing fee for moving the money, and Crafted Call's platform fee for running the transaction. They are charged by different parties and they behave differently on entry fees and on sales. This guide explains what each one is charged against, who bears it, and where to see it on a transaction.
The two fees
The Stripe processing fee is the cost of accepting a card payment. Stripe deducts it before the money reaches your account, and Crafted Call never adds anything on top of it. In the United States the standard rate is 2.9 percent plus US$0.30 per transaction, with a surcharge on cards issued outside your own country. Stripe publishes rates country by country, so Australian and New Zealand organizations pay the rate Stripe lists for their country in their own currency. Check Stripe's pricing page for yours.
The Crafted Call platform fee is what your plan charges for running the payment. There are two forms of it:
On a completed application, a flat amount set by your plan. It runs from US$1.00 on Pay as you go down to US$0.25 on Premier, and it is the same amount whether or not the call charges an entry fee.
On an artwork sale, a percentage of the sale, using your plan's sales rate. It runs from 4 percent on Pay as you go down to 1 percent on Premier.
Both are set by your plan. See Plans and Pricing for the figures on each. Publishing a call itself costs nothing on any plan.
Currency: the sales fee comes out of the transaction, so it is charged in whatever currency the payer used. The per-application charge and your subscription are Crafted Call's own revenue and are always billed in United States dollars, wherever your organization is.
What the per-application charge applies to
The charge is a flat amount per completed application, not a percentage of anything. An application counts once it is complete, so a draft an artist never finishes is never charged, and an application whose fee you waive outright is not charged either.
A discount is not a waiver. A coupon, a member benefit or a sliding-scale choice that brings an entry to nothing leaves an ordinary free entry, which carries the per-application charge like any other free entry: your organization pays it on the monthly invoice, or on an artists-pay call the artist pays it as a small checkout of its own before the application completes. Only the waiver on the submission itself, the one an admin applies, takes the charge away with the fee.
If you refund an entry fee and send the platform fee back with it, the per-application charge goes back too: your reports show it as refunded rather than collected. A refund never adds anything to your monthly invoice.
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It does not depend on what the call charges artists. A free-entry call carries the same per-application charge as a paid one: that charge is how a free-entry call pays for itself, and it is what replaced the old per-call activation fee.
Who pays the per-application charge
You choose this per call, on the Publish this call card, before the call goes public:
Your organization pays. The month's charges are gathered onto a single invoice, itemized by call, and billed at the start of the following month to the card you saved when you published. Nothing is charged at publish time.
Artists pay. The charge is added to what the artist pays at checkout, grossed up so the payment processing comes out of it rather than out of the charge. On Pay as you go that is about US$1.34 on a US card. The artist sees the total before they start.
The choice is fixed once the call is published, so make it before you publish. Artists-pay is available on calls priced in US dollars, and not yet for organizations in Australia, where the charge still needs a GST ruling. On a free-entry call the artist pays it as a small checkout of its own, which cannot be combined with other entries in the cart.
Two prices take the choice out of your hands. An entry priced above zero but below the per-application charge cannot cover it, so the artist pays the charge on that entry however the call is set. If every price on the call is below the charge, the publish card fixes the setting to artists pay and tells you the entry price that would give the choice back. If the call's prices straddle the charge, it keeps your setting and the artist pays the charge on entries under it; the call page and the entry form name that threshold. Where artists cannot be asked at all, a call priced that way is refused rather than part-collected.
If a monthly invoice cannot be collected
You have seven days from the first failed collection. Nothing changes during them, and a retry does not restart the clock. After seven days, publishing a new call, creating an exhibition, duplicating an exhibition and exporting submissions in bulk stop until the balance is settled. Live calls keep accepting artists, and signing in, reading your calls and submissions, jury review, your billing pages and updating your card are never restricted. Settling the invoice restores the four on its own.
Charging per entry rather than a single fee
A call does not have to charge one flat fee. Two other shapes are available when you set the call up:
Per entry. Set a First Entry Fee and an Each Additional Entry amount. The first entry the artist submits pays the first-entry price, and every entry after that pays the additional price.
Tiered. Price by how many entries the artist has submitted, using a table you define, with separate member and non-member columns where you use memberships.
Both count entries, not photographs. Extra images of one piece are documentation of that piece, so uploading five views of a sculpture is still one entry and one fee. The platform's per-application charge is separate from all of this and does not change with the entry fee you set.
Who bears the fees
On a call's fee settings, Gallery Absorbs Processing Costs decides this. With it on, artists pay exactly the submission fee you set and your organization absorbs the Stripe processing cost. With it off, it is added to what the artist pays at checkout. This setting governs the processing cost on an entry fee; who pays the per-application platform charge is the separate choice above.
There is no wrong answer, but decide before the call opens. Changing it after artists have paid means two groups paid different amounts for the same call.
You can see the result of that choice later: Artist Fee Coverage in Payout Reports is the share of fees artists paid rather than your organization, reported per currency.
Your own commission with an artist is a separate matter and comes out of the sale before their payout. See Setting Commission Rates.
An artwork sale, in layers
A $100 sale on a plan with a 2 percent platform sales rate and a 30 percent gallery commission:
Slice
Amount
Stripe processing fee
about $3.20
Crafted Call platform fee
$2.00
Gallery commission (30 percent)
$30.00
Artist payout (70 percent)
$70.00
Fees come out of your side of the split, not the artist's. The commission percentage the artist agreed to is the percentage they receive.
Seeing fees on a transaction
Open a transaction and the Fee Breakdown shows the gross amount, the Stripe processing fee, the platform commission, any conversion fee, and Net to Gallery. If the payment has been refunded, a Net After Refund line is added.
Across a period, your financial reports total the same figures, and Payout Reports breaks a bank deposit into Platform Fees, Stripe Fees, Conversion Fees, Artist Fee Coverage, Refunds and Net Amount, each per currency.
If a fee ever looks wrong, start with the individual transaction, not the report. The transaction shows the arithmetic.
Practical notes
Small charges cost proportionally more. Stripe's fixed component is a bigger share of a $5 charge than of a $50 one.
International cards cost more. If your fee ratio for a period is higher than expected, Payout Reports flags it, and international cards are the usual reason.
Reconcile against Stripe. Stripe is the authority on processing fees; Crafted Call mirrors them into your records.
Common questions
Does Crafted Call add Stripe's fee to its own? No. Stripe charges its fee directly, and the platform fee is separate.
Do free-entry calls cost anything per application? Yes, the same flat per-application charge as any other call. You can pay it on your monthly invoice or have artists pay it at checkout.
Can the artist or buyer cover the fees? Yes. The gallery-absorbs setting controls the Stripe processing cost on an entry fee, and the payer choice on the publish card controls the per-application platform charge. They are separate settings.
