You can authorize a credit card sale to ensure that the customer has enough credit available, but without actually charging the customer's account. Use authorizations when you need to take a credit card payment for material that you plan to ship at a later date, and need the credit card sale to include the freight charge for the order, that you might not know until the order is ready to ship. The actual charge to the card occurs when you ship the order to the customer.
Note: If you are accepting a credit card payment from a customer for an account balance, you must run that transaction as a sale transaction. You cannot authorize account payments for payment later.
Accepting credit card payments in this manner involves the following activities:
The order taker can enter the initial authorization, or the Automatic Shipping Ticket Phantom initiates the authorization, depending on your setting in the Credit Card: Collection Approval Mode control maintenance record. If the authorization method is Authorize Only Before Shipment, the system invoices any orders that have a status of Ship When Avail. If a credit card is attached to the order, and has an authorization method of Sale Before Shipment, the phantom triggers the communication with Element Payment Services to process the transaction and charge the customer's credit card. For more information, see Printing Shipping Tickets Automatically.
An order or payment taker can complete the authorization directly in order entry, or the system completes the authorization using a phantom process when the print status on the order reaches the status designated for shipment, or when the system receives a ship confirmation posting from Starship.
If the authorization method for the customer and card is set to Authorize Before Shipment, the Automatic Shipping Ticket Phantom performs the authorization and the completion is determined by the setting in the Credit Card: Collection Approval Mode control maintenance record. If the record is set to F, Freight Posting, the authorization completes when the system receives the ship confirmation from Starship. If the record is set to C, Credit Card Authorization Phantom, the authorization completes when the phantom runs and the transactions's print status matches those specified in the phantom driver screen.
See Also:
Authorizing (aka pre-authorizing) Credit Card Sales Amounts on Orders