Processing an Order
Processing orders involves obtaining information about customers to determine how and where to ship the goods and collecting payment for the goods shipped. To ensure that you process orders efficiently and accurately, follow the steps described below.
Collecting the Order Information
You need to obtain each of the following elements for each order:
Customer information
What you need to collect
Billing
To bill a customer, you need to record the detailed and accurate billing address so that you can correlate this information with the payment information.
Shipping
Without adequate shipping information, you cannot ship the goods.
Payment
To process a payment, you need to record detailed and accurate payment information:
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Form of payment and details associated with it: checking account information to verify that the customer is legitimate.
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Amount to bill your customer
Reviewing the Order
Once you have obtained the customer's information, you need to verify that it is correct, complete, and valid. As shown in the diagram below, CyberSource and the payment processor review and perform in real time the checks necessary to verify that the customer and the order are legitimate.
Transferring Money to your Account
Even if a check is validated, you do not know whether the checking account has sufficient funds to cover the customer’s purchase. Therefore, before shipping the goods, you need to wait until you receive confirmation from CyberSource or from your processor that the money has been deposited in your account.
Funds are transferred to your account a few days after you process the order. The same time interval applies to credits. When you look at the reports in the Business Center, you see all the payments collected and the refunds from all customers during a specific day, and you see all refunds as well. Regardless of your type of business, whether goods or subscriptions, you must wait until the check clears before shipping the goods.
Shipping the Order
After the money has been transferred to your account, you verify that you have the goods in your inventory, and you ship the order.
