Custom Orders – Payment Deposit/Balance Paid when Shipped

[s1b]

I am curious on how stores handle partial payments.

We have custom products that require a deposit/50% payment before we begin production.
Each order takes about 30 days to produce/ship and then collect the balance on the order.
Also, we ship + or – the ordered quantity. So my final credit card processing is almost never = to the original 50%. It almost always higher than the original balance.

Example:
The customer submits an order for a total of $1,000 - an authorization on the credit card is submitted.
I capture the credit card payment for $500 after I review and accept the order.
When the order is ready to ship, I revise the quantity to match what we are shipping.
The new order total is $1,050.
Then I charge the credit card for the balance of the order = $550.

Some questions/comment I come up with are:
After I charge the 50% deposit, should I cancel/void the balance of the credit card authorization?

Should I even be authorizing the full order amount - especially since it will be around 30 days before I can collect the rest? Should it only be the 50%?

If I leave the authorization alone, when it is time to charge the balance, I think I will end with a 3rd charge/transaction to complete the order total - the original 50%, the 2nd 50% and the amount for the extra we completed.

How is the deposit payment shown on the Order Preview/Email Order Confirmation? Some customers want to see the various payment transactions and dates.

I should also send out a final order – possibly call it a Final Invoice – showing the final quantity/total and showing the 2 payments.
This is probably done manually - I trigger an email for these orders with the additional “comments”.


About 10% of my orders will fall under this type. The rest of my orders are stock items and currently flow with almost no effort.


Thanks for your time!
Corina

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

What about this scenario:

Set the price charged @ 50%. Use Custom Field/Description to explain this is a deposit.
Set up a 'at will' price product. There are two ways to do this, 1) create a product priced at 1.00 (or .01 ff you need pricing down to cents) then use quantity as the 'price'. You will need to do some template wrangling to make it look good. 2) use a basket charge function. (details later). The downside is that this charge appears beneath the product listing though some clever jQuery could make it look like a regular product.

When the custom product is completed, send email with a encoded link to the 'at will' price product for 'final payment'. When final payment is made, ship product.

No messing with authorizations, holds and captures.

[William Davis]

Interesting, what is the procedure to later charge the remaining outstanding balance?

Often times we have customers wishing to add items to their existing order they placed online and we have to obtain their CVV code in order to charge their card again.

[s1b]

This is what is happening now:
- the order is processed/card authorized at the full order amount upon checkout.
- I edit the Order in Admin - I Capture the charge for 50% of the order amount And I void the remaining Authorization.
- When the order is ready to ship (almost 30 days later),

I edit the Order in Admin - Revising Quantities to match what we are actually shipping. Then I authorize and capture the card for the "new" remaining balance.

I supposed I could leave the balance of the authorization for the entire time - but I seem to remember reading somewhere that that was not good practice.

To answer your question - Currently, when they place the order the CVV is entered. When I run the card again through Admin - I do not use the CVV if I do not have it. My card processer charges more when I do not use the CVV - so it runs at a higher cost on the new charge.
For clients that make a change to an order - if I remember, I ask them for the code. If I don't remember to do that, I just do not use it.

The setting for that requirement for me is in Payment Settings > CHASE Paymentech Orbital Gateway then

uncheck the box for "Require CVV2 in Administrative Interface". I also set my Gateway/Processing requirements with Chase to Not Required. I use Miva's settings to force the code entry on the customer/store side.

[William Davis]

That all sound great to me, though I would be worried a staff remember forgetting to make the charge for the remaining balance.

[s1b]

Our procedure is - We get the final shipment quantity, Edit the Order to match the new quantity, Print the Packing List, Charge the Balance. Then it is OK'd to print shipping labels. We do not ship unless the charge goes through. We've had situations where the original card does not go through on the balance for some reason and we have to get updated card information. It's about 30 days later so anything can happen to a card, like they close for fraudulent activity, are over the balance, etc.

Let's say for some reason, someone ships the order without following the above procedure...My next check will catch the error because I sync all orders to QuickBooks. When I receive the 50% deposit payment against the order - the balance remaining still shows open in Quickbooks - that is my "backup check". I continually check for open balances to make sure we collect on and close all orders.

If Miva were your only "ledger", I suppose you could leave a $1.00 left in the Authorization. Then you would View Orders by "Payment Status" and "Authorized with Partial Capture". That would show the orders that still have an amount left opened.

[William Davis]

Thank you!