Processing an Order

Processing an Order

To process orders efficiently and accurately, you need to obtain sufficient and accurate information about customers so that you can determine how and where to ship the goods and collect payment.

Depending on the type of products that you sell (shipped goods or purchased services), you can collect payment from your customer either immediately or after you ship the goods. If you sell goods that you need to ship, see Reviewing the Order below. If you sell services that you provide immediately upon request, skip to Collecting Payment from the Customer. Each of these steps is described in detail below.

Collecting the Order Information

You need to obtain each of the following elements for each order:

Customer information

What you need to collect

To bill a customer, you need to record the detailed and accurate billing address so that you can correlate this address with the payment information.

Without adequate shipping information, you cannot ship the goods.

Credit cards are the most common forms of payment. To process a payment and to verify that the customer is legitimate and has sufficient funds to pay for the goods, you need to record detailed and accurate payment information:

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Form of payment and details: credit card number and expiration date.

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Amount to bill your customer

If you sell goods that you need to ship, see Reviewing the Order. If you sell services that you provide immediately upon request, skip to Collecting Payment from the Customer.

Level II and Level III Fields

Level II and Level III fields can be included for Sale, Credit, and Authorization transaction types. To process a transaction as a Level III request, select the Process as Level III Purchasing Card checkbox. If not checked, the fields will be processed as standard Level II fields. For more information on these fields, see Level III and Additional Level II Fields.

Each processor supports a different set of Level II and Level III fields. If you submit a Level II or Level III transaction but omit required fields, your processor could charge you penalties or increase your fees. For descriptions of the fields and to find out if you can or should use these fields for your processor, see Level II and Level III Processing Using the Simple Order API and Level II and Level III Processing Using the SCMP API.

The data from these fields appear in the transaction receipt, the transaction details, and in the settlement and credit pages.

Reviewing the Order

Once you have obtained the customer's information, you need to verify that it is correct, complete, and valid. The customer's bank and CyberSource review and verify the customer's information in real time as shown in the diagram below:

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Authorization—Authorization ensures that the customer has sufficient funds to pay for the goods and reserves the amount until you collect the payment.

To authorize a transaction, you send the customer's payment data and the total amount of the order to CyberSource or you enter the information in the Virtual Terminal. CyberSource contacts the customer's bank who authorizes or declines the transaction. If the bank authorizes the transaction, you receive an authorization code for the transaction.

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Smart Authorization—Smart Authorization verifies that the customer is legitimate by analyzing each credit card authorization and, therefore, guards against fraud losses. Smart Authorization uses these fraud detection tools.

You can choose whether to process the order regardless of the results of Smart Authorization or to review the order before you process it further. To use Smart Authorization, define your settings in the Business Center. For detailed information about Smart Authorization, see the Configuring Smart Authorization.

Shipping the Order

After you have reviewed the order and performed the checks necessary to verify that the customer and the order are legitimate, verify that you have the goods in your inventory, and ship the order.

Collecting Payment from the Customer

After you have shipped the order or provided the service, you must request that the customer's bank transfers the funds from the customer's account to your bank account by a process called capture. If you do not request, you will not be paid. The combination of authorization and capture is called a sale.

Depending on your type of business, you can request payment in one of two ways:

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You use this process if your business is to ship goods:

Authorization in the first request, order review and shipping, and capture in the second request.

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You use this process if your business provides a service, such as subscriptions or music downloads:

Authorization and capture in the same request.

Transferring Money to your Account

Funds are transferred to your account usually two to four days after you capture a payment. The same time period applies to credits. When you look at the reports in the Business Center, you see all the payments collected from all customers during a specific day, and you see all refunds as well.

To reconcile the amount in your bank account with the orders you have processed, you can use the reports available in the Business Center and from your bank or financial institution.