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A number of our clients are struggling with the new credit card processing workflow, where the pre-authorized amount is a cap for capturing.  Scenario: sales order is created with the amount of $100.  Credit card is pre-authorized for $100.  There is not integration with carriers through Acumatica OR (more often) it’s an LTL order, for which there is no integration in Acumatica.  So, the freight price cannot be estimated at the time of Sales Order.  Shipment is created and confirmed.  The freight price is received either from a 3rd party app or entered manually.  Invoice is created.  The invoice is now for $100 + $20 (shipping charge).  Since the card was pre-authorized for $100, the client cannot charge $120.  There are 2 options at this point: a) void pre-auth and create a new payment for $120; b) charge $100 and create another payment for $20.

The issue with the first approach is that voiding does not remove holdback from an end customer account, and if they are short on money, the second authorization may fail.

The issue with the second approach (and first), it cannot be automated, and some clients don’t like seeing 2 charges per transaction on their account.

Question: when are we getting the amount adjustment back?  We know for a fact it was working in 2019 version of Acumatica, but was removed for some reason.

Thank you!

@yurik05 Many of our clients have Shipping Carrier Integration along with Auto-Packaging which allows us to estimate shipping costs at the time of Sales Order Entry. This plus the ability to use Shipping Terms to mark up the estimated costs allows users to pre-authorize for a higher amount than the order. Using EasyPost with the Shipping Carrier Integration even allows us to get freight quotes from LTL carriers (if the carrier is supported by EasyPost).

Once the order is shipped, if the shipping price ends up being lower, you will post-authorize at invoicing for the true amount and the rest of the pre-auth will fall off.


@yurik05 Many of our clients have Shipping Carrier Integration along with Auto-Packaging which allows us to estimate shipping costs at the time of Sales Order Entry. This plus the ability to use Shipping Terms to mark up the estimated costs allows users to pre-authorize for a higher amount than the order. Using EasyPost with the Shipping Carrier Integration even allows us to get freight quotes from LTL carriers (if the carrier is supported by EasyPost).

Once the order is shipped, if the shipping price ends up being lower, you will post-authorize at invoicing for the true amount and the rest of the pre-auth will fall off.

Thank you Chris.  We will explore EasyPost.  That might help if they have solid integration with LTL carriers.


Background:

There is some complexity to what is allowed. Some card processors allow capturing more than was pre-authorized and some do not. An example of what is allowed is provided in the Visa Core Processing rules (but may differ for other card networks). The amount allowed to be captured may vary by the card network, type of transaction (for example: card present), time from original authorization, and other factors.

Future Plans:

Acumatica is investigating the ability to introduce the ability to charge more than the authorized amount by Processing Center. Message me if you would like to review the design of the proposedsolution.


Is there any update to this issue?


Even if the card network allows capturing for more than the authorized amount a large number of gateways/processors do not allow this(I don’t believe Authorize.Net does for instance).

A feature to manage a buffer for authorizations(particularly on orders that ship) would be a better solution. Also better support for capturing an authorization for a lesser amount, bit of a mess how finicky the system is currently. 


@dstjohn84 we are looking at implementing a payment processor which provides this capability. The goal is to do this in 2022. In the meantime there are solutions in the marketplace (VelocIT has one) that support this capability.


Any new update on this?


Other ERPs do this - not doing this is just creating frustration for customers moving over to Acumatica!!  Needs to be addressed ASAP!


This may be a late reply, but I hope it helps someone else.  Here is what worked for me today to pay an amount less than was authroized on the original sales order but equal to what was shipped and invoiced.

 

Capture less than pre-authorized on the Sales Order

Create a Sales Order for an amount of product (stock or nonstock) to sell.

Save and Remove Hold on the Sales Order. Then Pre-Auth the potential sale for $200.

 

 

Now let’s assume that only 7 out of 10 ship so create a shipment for for 7 items.


 

Remove hold and confirm shipment. Then create an invoice for 7 items.


 

Notice that the invoice is for $140 instead of the estimated $200 on the Sales Order. Click on the Aplications tab on the invoice.


Now find your payment in the Receivables >> Payments and Applications screen and open it, or click on the link in the Reference Nbr column. The Payments & Application screen will process the pre-authorized amount and not provide an option to change it.


So close this screen and return to the Invoice screen and the Applications tab. Click on the Capture button on the Invoice » Applications screen.


Now a Release button appears to post this invoice. Click on Release.


After the invoice posts, click on the Finance tab and then click on your finance batch link.


Notice the amount posted is only for the invoice amount.


Now let’s check the payment amount in the Receivables >> Payments and Applications screen. The payment that was formally $200 is now only the amount on the invoice.

Now check the Payments and Applications Card Processing tab. It shows while authorized for $200, only $140 was charged to the card.  As a final step, go back to the payment and invoice screens. Notice both documents are now applied to each other and closed.


Good work around, thanks.  As you have probably guessed since my post I have had to find something that helped.

 

Interesting to note that others like we do allow backorders and also allow a prepay and add option to open credit accounts to add on the actual freight post shipment.  This does pose a problem for our web orders that are credit card because the buyer expects to see what is the total cost.  We also use Shipstation for our web orders to generate an estimated freight charge and commit to that to the buyer.  We figure that it is reasonably accurate most of the time especially if the order is only for one item.  We have over 13,000 active items and although we try to capture and use the actual shipping dims to estimate freight, but our typical B2B customer order is for multiple items so then we would need the advanced pick and pack algorithm, probably some serious AI.  We just hope to make out on the average.

 

So to deal with the Prepay and Add freight after shipment we asked our reseller Cal Business to do a small development piece that allows us to add on an extra % of order cost to allow us to pre-auth enough for the credit card and then we do as you suggested, just capture the actual amount just like you did for the partial shipment.  In the other direction, if you payment terms are Prepaid,and an order does only succeed in capturing all  of the actual cost  the shipment the invoice will go on credit hold and we can re-capture the balance with an additional transaction without too many customer complaints for the two tranactions.

 

As you already pointed out, none of this lends well to automation.

 

BUT,

After many months of credit card processing, this is not longer my biggest problem.  The biggest problem is that the credit card authorization transaction is work BUTKISS!

In any of these examples, waiting to capture the authorization after the shipment is asking for a bad debt.  Usually our packages move so fast that they are out the door before we identify that the authorization capture has been declined.  Even if we find it in time, interrupting the work flow to pull a package, unpack, back out the order, etc. is a career killer.

 

I have been meaning to check the boards to see if anyone is trying to address this situation and if not I should probably open a new thread.

 

Many thanks for your comments.  Keep calm and carry on!

 

John

 


@jharsh Has a better solution been found?  I am trying to solve this same problem.  Example:

Sales order total $200.  Need to preauth before even picking/shipping.  I don’t know what my freight costs will be.  I want to preauth for $250

Then when we actually ship, update actual freight, the credit card will charge the actual (less than the $250).

 

I cannot find a way to do this.  

 

We could put that $50 on the sales order, but then it will not override it at shipment time.

 

Anyone have any help here?


Yes, with help.  Our VAR was able to do a pretty simple customization using a special non-stock item that temporarily added the freight to the order before preauth but then allowed the actual freight charged passed back from our Starship to override for the capture.  If in our automated capture the pre-auth is too low then the balance places the order on Prepayment Needed and we recapture the difference.  That ends up in two charges but I has not caused a problem.

 

I currently do not have details on the customization but if needed I will try to help

 

JOhn 

 

 


@Doug Johnson @Dmitrii Naumov - Any update on this?  Dmitrii indicated this is not on the roadmap for 24R2.  When can we anticipate this feature?


Paya, a Nuvei company, has a solution that does exactly this and the whole process can be fully automated using batch processing. The solution is in the Acumatica Marketplace under Paya Core Credit Card processing.


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