Reauthorizing a Credit Card upon Shipment

You can avoid reserving funds against the customer's card too early, but still ensure that the customer has the necessary funds before you ship the product. To do this, run a pre-authorization of 0 dollars (or whatever currency is being used) during order entry. Then use the Credit Card Shipping Authorization Utility to perform another authorization for the full amount of the order just before you ship the product.

In the Credit Card Shipping Authorization utility:

1. Specify criteria that the utility uses to select the transactions to process:

   Order

   Specify the starting and ending customer order numbers to reauthorize.

   Date Shipped

   Specify the date range of shipped orders to reauthorize.

   Ship Via

   Specify a shipping carrier, or a range of carriers, to limit the reauthorization only to orders handled by that carrier, or range of carriers. This is useful if you want to run the utility multiple times based on when a certain shipper is due to arrive each day.

2. Select a report generation option:
   • Always: Display all processed transactions regardless of success or failure.
   • On Error: Display transactions only when an error occurs during processing. This is useful if you run the utility in the background and only want to be notified when a problem occurs.
   • Never: Never display transactions. This is useful if you already monitor transactions through the Credit Card Transactions form or some other data analysis.
3. Click Process. The report output displays the credit card transaction details. The reference pointer to the third-party credit card processing application is displayed in place of the actual credit card number.

Notes

• Running in the Background: You can run this utility on the background queue so that it processes during off-business hours or periodically throughout the day. The Background Task Definition for this report is SSSCCIShippingAuthorizationReport.
• Transaction Fees: Depending on the way that the user's credit card processor handles voids and authorizations, using the Shipping Authorization utility to "re-Authorize" a credit card could cause extra charges to the user's account. The solution was written in a way to reduce the number of transactions by checking to see if a previous authorization for the same amount has already been done for the shipment, but if the user runs the utility multiple times it could cause multiple transactions which in turn could cause multiple transaction fees.
• Double Reserve: Users could possibly "double reserve" a customer's credit card if they pre-authorize the full amount during order entry and then authorize again during the shipment process. The intended process when using the Shipping Authorization method is to only authorize a small amount (0 or 1 dollar) during order entry and then do the full amount at time of shipping. However, the solution was coded to provide the ability to authorize full amounts in both places to support those customers that primary deal with a longer lead time where the pre-authorization will typically expire.

Related Topics

Pre-authorizing Credit Card Amounts or Percentages