This article goes over what BackOffice is, the services offered through BackOffice, and how to enable it.
Overview
BackOffice is a service offered by Teachable to help you deal with some of the challenges posed by running an online school. Schools that have set up teachable:pay or the Monthly Payment Gateway can enable BackOffice for an additional fee. BackOffice is not available for schools using custom payment gateways.
Enabling BackOffice gives you access to the following services:
- Automated Affiliate & Author payouts
- Automated Affiliate & Author tax form collection
- PayPal and Buy Now Pay Later as a product payment option
Automatic Affiliate/Author Payouts
Teachable will automatically distribute payouts to affiliates and authors in your school via PayPal. Teachable distributes payouts to authors and affiliates every 30 days on the first business day of the month.
Affiliate/Author Tax Form Collection
Teachable will automatically handle and collect W-9 or W-8BEN forms from every affiliate and author that has made over $600 by the end of the year, as well as issue them a 1099 form before January 31st of the following year.
Enable PayPal - Optional
If you’d like to offer PayPal as a payment option for your students, BackOffice allows you to accept PayPal payments in your school when using Teachable's native payment gateways (teachable:pay or the Monthly Payment Gateway). Payments made via PayPal will be included in your teachable:pay payouts on your selected schedule (i.e. daily, weekly, monthly), and in your regular monthly payout if you are using the Monthly Payment Gateway.
To enable:
- In your admin, navigate to Settings > Payments.
- Scroll to BackOffice and toggle the "Offer PayPal at checkout" option on.
There are cases where PayPal will not be available as a payment options for students on Teachable's native payment gateways, even with BackOffice enabled. These specific instances are as follows:
- Currencies outside the United States (PayPal is only available in USD at this time)
- Recurring payments (subscriptions and payment plans) where a coupon that applies to only the first payment is applied at checkout
- Recurring payments (subscriptions and payment plans) where an order bump is applied at checkout
Read more about PayPal and other payment options for your students.
Enable Buy Now Pay Later - Optional
Enabling Buy Now, Pay Later offers students the ability to use tools like Affirm, Afterpay, or Klarna to purchase products in your school. Learn more about enabling Buy Now Pay Later in your school.
Enabling BackOffice
If you did not opt-in to BackOffice through teachable:pay onboarding—or if you’re using the Monthly Payment Gateway—opt-in to BackOffice by completing the following steps:
- Log in to your Teachable school.
- Click on Settings in the admin sidebar and navigate to the Payments section.
- In the Teachable BackOffice section, click on the Enable Teachable BackOffice button.
- Click Enable BackOffice to confirm. Alternatively, if you want to disable BackOffice, you can click on the Disable Teachable BackOffice button.
NOTE: Once you have enabled PayPal Payments through BackOffice, no further action items are required for PayPal to display as a payment option at checkout.
BackOffice Fees
While BackOffice is enabled, schools with a Gross Merchandise Value (“GMV”) of $500,000 or more will be charged a 2% per-transaction fee. Schools with a GMV of less than $500,000 will be charged a per-transaction fee of 2.8%.
| Last 12 Months of GMV | Fee |
| $0 to $499,999.99 | 2.80% |
| $500,000 or more | 2% |