Authorize.net Questions

[inyopools]

We are currently using Authorize.net on our website to process our credit card transactions. Currently when a customer places an order we a reauthorizing only and when we ship the product we are capturing the funds. The question I have is on orders with multiple items for example our customer places the following order.

Widget A = $750
Widget B = $250

We authorize the customers card for $1000 We ship Widget A out imeadiatley,we would like to capture the $750 at this point and then if widget B ships out a week later we would like to capture the additional $250 off of the original authorization. Do you know if this is possible using authorize.net

Thanks

[FalseDawn]

No, it's not. You need the customer's card details to be able to rebill.

[HRoth]

No, you don't need their details. You can capture the $750. Then you can come back, do a search for the transaction, and click on "View Rebillable Transactions." It should show you that and then you can put in another charge, but it can't be for more than the original charge, I don't think. It will automatically authorize and capture. Also, you can only rebill within a certain amount of time, I think six months. But I do this with customers when they call back and order something else, so I know it works.

[Corey Bryant]

You can customize your chopping car script form to do this with any gateway.

but keep in mind that pre-auths are usually only good for a few business days. They vary per issuing bank. A lot of times though you can sign into the virtual terminal and still clear the funds it's just that those funds might be be guarateed yours at that point

-Corey

[FalseDawn]

I asked this very same question as it was something I wanted to do, too, and was told by an authorize.net rep (on their live help) that it wasn't possible.

Hmmm, not very happy about that if it is in fact possible.

[Corey Bryant]

Something my programmer told me - anything is possible :)

Talk to your programmer and see if he / she can send a sale / pre-auth to the gateway. I do not see why it cannot be done

-Corey

[FalseDawn]

lol, funny - I am a programmer!
My system is set up fine to do pre-auths...
I was just told by authnet that once a transaction is captured, that's it - you cannot do further captures, even if the first capture is below the pre-auth amount.
I will investigate the method mentioned by HRoth.

[Corey Bryant]

You could not send one transaction thru and then a second thru as well?

-Corey

[FalseDawn]

You could not send one transaction thru and then a second thru as well?

I don't know, as I never tried! I took what they said and never investigated further.

On further reflection, it seems a bit of a dodgy process to me anyway - if a customer makes an order of $100 and then they get 2 (or more) smaller charges on their statement, I can see scope for confusion and possible chargebacks.

[Corey Bryant]

Well pre-auths differ from issuing bank.

I have a few credit cards that I monitor (for this type of situation). There is one that does not show pre-auths at all. It just tells me that I have XX amount of credit and takes that pre-auth into consideration.

Another one shows the dollar amount but nothing else.

A chargeback on a pre-auth? I cannot see that happening because you do not have the money. Only until the post-auth / sale do you have the money.

Another option - call Authorizenet.com back. Talk to another tech support person. Maybe you will get another answer

-Corey

[FalseDawn]

A chargeback on a pre-auth? I cannot see that happening because you do not have the money

You appear to have misinterpreted what I said. I was not referring to the pre-auth being an issue, and am aware that a chargeback cannot be issued on a pre-auth.
However, if you have a pre-auth for say $100 and then do 10 different captures for $10 each, they will appear as 10 separate transactions on the statement (extreme case, admittedly) - surely this opens up the possbility of the customer getting confused?

[HRoth]

One time when I used this to add the price of some products that the customer had decided to add to their order, the customer later contacted me angry that s/he had been charged again. I explained how it happened, and s/he was okay with it. Since then, I always notify the customer by email or whatever that they will see the charge and that it will look like it is for the same thing, just for different amounts. So if they originally bought l lb of blue widgets and then they call back and want to add 5 green widgets, and I use the rebilling feature, it will show two charges for blue widgets. You know how on authorize.net you can if you are using the virtual terminal input a description of what they are buying? With the rebilling thing, you can't enter any description. It just takes all the info from the previous charge. All you can enter is the amount. I am pretty sure it can't be more than the original charge too.

Maybe authorizenet wants people to do this only for like a subscription or something along those lines. But it was actually someone at authorize.net who told me about it in the first place, because I was whining about how when they changed things so you could no longer download a transaction record and get the customer's full cc number and then re-enter it to do another charge. You used to be able to do this even if they had entered the card number through the gateway themselves and never given the number to you personally. I didn't like that I had to call them and get their card number again. Authorize.net said no, you just do a rebilling. So that is how I have been doing it since. Only one time did it not work, and it was because the card had expired.

[inyopools]

I spoke with authorizenet yesterday and they told me that you can only capture once off of an authorization. So if you have a preauth for $1000 and ship out the $250 item and capture the $250 you cannot go back and capture the remaining $750 when the 2nd item ships out. You have to run the credit card through a second time and run the chance that the customers card may be declined.

[Corey Bryant]

Usually the only time it will be declined if it is the same amoutn with the same order ID.
The gateways can be programmed just in case the customers hits submits twice

-Corey

[happyabc]

As HRoth states, you would use the Rebill feature for the second billing.
Here is more detail. When you received the initial authorization for $1000 you received an authorization code for that amount. When you submitted the capture, using that authorization code, for $750 you actually released the other $250 being held. Because of this you need to obtain another authorization code (re-submit the transaction).
You can rebill any successful transction for up to 90 days after the original transaction.
The Rebill feature creates a new transaction and is not associate with or related to the original transaction in any way (except for the fact that it pulls all of the data from the orginal transaction).
Therefore, you can exceed the amount of the original transaction when you a using the rebill feature.