Thread: do you AUTHORIZE or CAPTURE at time of order?

hey everyone, just wanted to open a conversation about what is best... do you suggest AUTHORIZING credit card at time of order and then CAPTURING when order is shipped or do you guys just CAPTURE at time of order?

We have always simply captured at the time of order, but there are some issues with this. If we are out of stock on an item, then we have to issue a refund which takes 1-5 business days to hit customers card.

I'm thinking about switching to AUTHORIZE, but wondering if you guys have any feedback about this process.... is it still easy to manage? are customers happier this way?

We authorize when order is place, then we CAPTURE when shipped. I wrote a small tool that allows the warehouse to scan the order and each item as they pack. Once all items are successfully scanned they get a button for Complete. When they click that it captures the funds. This is nice because the only way we can capture the fund is if we have in fact PROPERLY packed the order.

do you ever get cards being declined when you try to CAPTURE it? i assume that sometimes you are trying to CAPTURE the order a day or two later and maybe the card will then be declined?

What would be really cool is a means of having the payments auto-captured when the order is marked as shipped...


TTFN

BFG

Originally Posted by toofast

do you ever get cards being declined when you try to CAPTURE it? i assume that sometimes you are trying to CAPTURE the order a day or two later and maybe the card will then be declined?

Never had this happen.. When the card is authorized a hold is put on those funds, we have 30 days (I think) to capture.

What would be really cool is a means of having the payments auto-captured when the order is marked as shipped...

In essence this is what our system does. We use WSI to mark the order shipped, push the tracking number to the system and capture funds.

ssgumby, when an order is out of stock, do you just VOID that "authorization"? does the money go IMMEDIATELY back onto the customers credit card? any chance you could explain that a bit?

i ask because we have sooo many customers that complain about the money being put on hold on their card.

Originally Posted by toofast

ssgumby, when an order is out of stock, do you just VOID that "authorization"? does the money go IMMEDIATELY back onto the customers credit card? any chance you could explain that a bit?

i ask because we have sooo many customers that complain about the money being put on hold on their card.

Well, it all depends. In general we have the item in stock, but in the case where it isnt in stock we contact the customer and let them know there will be a slight delay. We get deliveries 3 days a week so on average the product will still go out within 3 days. Now, in the case where it is backordered from our distributor then we will either void the order (if thats all they got) or we will refund the cost of that one item. I guess by "refund" I mean we will adjust order total to be that of the order minus the backordered product. Then when we capture it captures the correct amount.

interesting, so, when you "adjust order total" and then capture, i am guessing that you have to do that manually through your merchant gateway? i don't think the order editing in aspdotnetstorefront works well for this scenario?

also, do you sell your script which auto-captures?

Originally Posted by toofast

interesting, so, when you "adjust order total" and then capture, i am guessing that you have to do that manually through your merchant gateway? i don't think the order editing in aspdotnetstorefront works well for this scenario?

also, do you sell your script which auto-captures?

I don't personally do it on a regular basis, but I have once or twice and the adjust order total in the admin seems to work fine. I know we don't login to authorize.net and adjust. I think as long as its in an authorize state and you are adjusting for an amount LESS than what you authorized for then it should work.

I don't sell the software I use but its really pretty straight forward. I don't sell mine because it is pretty heavily customized for our business.

its really as simple as this code below to do that capture using WSI.

Code:

        private void captureOrder(string orderId)
        {
            StringBuilder xml = new StringBuilder();
            xml.Append("<AspDotNetStorefrontImport Verbose=\"false\">");
            xml.Append("<OrderManagement OrderNumber=\"" + orderId + "\" Action=\"Capture\" />");
            xml.Append("</AspDotNetStorefrontImport>");
            
            String Result = callWsi(xml.ToString(), txtSource.Text);

            XmlDocument response = new XmlDocument();
            response.LoadXml(Result);
            XmlElement root = response.DocumentElement;
            XmlNamespaceManager nsmgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(response.NameTable);
            nsmgr.AddNamespace("x", root.NamespaceURI); // x is our temp alias
            XmlNodeList nodesEntries = root.SelectNodes("x:OrderManagement", nsmgr);
            String status = "";
            foreach (XmlNode nodeEntry in nodesEntries)
            {
                status = nodeEntry.Attributes.GetNamedItem("Status").Value;
            }
            lblErrors.Text = status;
            
        }

One important thing to remember, the ASPDNSF code by default reduces inventory on CAPTURE ... if you want to only AUTHORIZE when the customer places the order then there are code tweaks to make it reduce inventory when the order is completed.

thanks so much, this is really helpful!

Our gateway advises authorize only good for 7 days. The majority of our products are special order / non-inventory items or custom fab, with 3-6 week lead time. Gateway (Intuit) advises we need to notify customers of lead times, prepayment policies etc., then can capture on order. We're capturing on order with known and stated long lead times.