Frustrations with Intuit Merchant Services Module

[davjav]

I am writing in hopes to get this problem the attention it deserves - but also to see if there are others experiencing this issue - or others who might be able to share their best practices.
Up until a year ago, we ran all of our credit card purchases inside of Quickbooks (the credit card number was just captured in Miva and then we entered the cc info into QB and hit "process" and the funds would capture and the invoice marked as "paid"). Because of changes in the industry as well as work flow here, we have been capturing credit card funds INSIDE miva instead of inside QB. A few days after the funds are captured, QB will load those payments into the company file - however, they are all attributed to "other customer" - and we have to go through a very tedious and difficult task of trying to match up each charge with the correct Quickbooks customer so that the invoice gets properly marked as paid (and also so that our sales are properly updated). What used to be a one click process is now a multistep process often involving 3 different platforms to figure out the correct pairings. We've been told the issue is with the Miva Intuit Merchant Services module.

Is anyone else using this module? anyone else experiencing this problem? Anyone have any work-around solutions? This issue is really hindering our ability to run our business effectively because our books are continually out of date as we do not have the manpower at the moment to complete this very manual process each and every day.

[oliverands]

I've written my own tools for getting data from Miva into Quickbooks, so I can't speak to the module. But is it possible for you to set up your sales to be imported into Quickbooks as a sales receipt instead of as an invoice? That would alleviate the problem of you having to match payments to invoices because sales receipts are treated as sales that have already been paid. It's how I treat the data I import from Miva.

[davjav]

Thank you for the reply. What software are you using to do the importing? We actually manually create the invoices in QB - we don't import anything from Miva so to speak - the credit card charges get pulled in once we have captured the payment .... Would love to hear more about what steps you take as we are having such a difficult time with this....

[oliverands]

To get data into Quickbooks from Miva, I export orders to a flat file from Miva. Then I've written something in MS Access that transforms the Miva orders flat file into a Quickbooks import file which I import. It's not rocket science, but it gets the job done.

If you are manually inputting orders in Quickbooks (I hope you don't have many each day...), you should be able to capture funds in Miva and then input the orders as sales receipts, rather than invoices, in Quickbooks. Try that and see if it solves the problem.

You might also want to look into Miva Synchro:

https://www.miva.com/synchro

[davjav]

Unfortunately synchro is not the answer for us - and honestly we are not looking to export the orders to QB - we have systems in place to do the manual entry, and while that sounds archaic, it works for us right now. The issue we have is matching up the payment captured to the correct customer in QB.... How do you currently capture funds? Are you doing it inside of Miva?

[oliverands]

Yes, funds are authorized and captured at the same time in Miva. When the transactions go into Quickbooks as sales receipts, Quickbooks treats them as paid and creates a payment to deposit for them. Then there's no need to receive payments on the transaction. You just need to reconcile your pending payments to deposit to what has actually hit your payment account.

[davjav]

The issue we are having is that when the paymetns come into QB, they are not assigned a customer - so we have to touch each payment and assign it to the correct customer. Do you have that step?

[oliverands]

No. I authorize and capture all payments in Miva. And then I import transactions as sales receipts. Quickbooks treats as sales receipt as an invoice plus a payment. So there is no additional payment that comes into Quickbooks for me. Your set up and the way you handle payments in Quickbooks may differ from how I do it. But look into whether you can authorize and capture in Miva and then treat sales as sales receipts rather than invoices in Quickbooks. If you can configure it that way you should be able to avoid the issue you are having.

[davjav]

The issue is that it is not associated with a customer - when you import the payments as sales receipts - how does it link up to the customer record in QB?
I really appreciate you replying to my questions ... thanks!

[oliverands]

You simply assign the sales receipt to a customer--just as you assign an invoice to a customer. It's the same process.

[davjav]

So you have to touch every single sales receipt and apply to a customer? That is the problem for us....we process a large number of transactions a day and assigning the payments to customers a few days after the funds are captured proves challenging. What we would prefer is to enter something on the MIVA side when we are capturing the funds that will link to the customer record and/or invoice when it pulls into QB. It is easier for us to do it at capture then to determine how to link it up days later....