Payment for Backordered Items

[Psalty]

Hello again,

I have a question regarding how backordered credit card payments are handled. For backordered items, is the payment still authorized at the time of purchase, or does AC wait until the item is available for shipment until authorization? The problem is, if an authorization # is obtained right away, then that # may no longer be valid by the time the order is ready to be shipped (anything beyond 5 business days is questionable). Preferably, the payment would not be authorized or captured until the product is ready to be shipped for backordered items.

BTW, let me congratulate you guys again on the new release. So far AC 7 compares very favorably with every other solution I've evaluated.

Thanks

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello,

The authorization with the payment processors I know of are valid for 30 days or longer. Paypal payflow pro and some of the other processors allow for partial capture via the API and we've implemented in AC7 where available. Even if it's not available via the API like with authorize.net it's still available if you log into their virtual terminal.

If you check the 'Payment Gateways' section of our feature guide you'll find which transactions are support via the various gateways.

http://www.ablecommerce.com/AbleCommerc ... 25C20.aspx

[Psalty]

I've talked to Authorize.net about this issue and they have told me that while they hold the authorization codes for 30 days, the banks that issue those codes may only honor them for up to 5 business days (this is apparently rare though). This means if we capture payment using an authorization code that is say 20 days old, we run the risk of the bank rejecting the payment after settlement. That’s why it would be desirable for items that we allow backorder purchases on, a scenario we will actually use for preorders, to delay payment authorization until the item is in stock. I believe this has to be how company’s like Amazon, who will take preorders on items months in advance, must do it. Otherwise, they would have to reauthorize the credit card after 30 days which costs money to do. Also, authorizations usually show up immediately in the online status area for most bank accounts, which may annoy customers when we promise them that their card will not be charged until shipment.

Thanks

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello,

I've tried some different ideas for work around's for this issue.

1. I created payment methods (visa/mc/etc) without attaching them to gateway, then created payments methods attached to gateway but only available to admin group. So the payment could be added after the fact via the gateway, but not charged during the initial checkout.

However it needs to be a feature enhancement to really make it smooth. There needs to be a store setting where you can set the payment settings to not charge the credit card for back ordered items.

I can see this feature needing other enhancements as well. On checkout it should ask the customer if they want to wait for the backorder items to become available before the entire order is shipped, to save on shipping or ship it separately when they become available..

1. Wait: then the entire order wouldn't be charged to the card.
2. Ship separately: then the backorder items would be moved to another shipment and they would be able to select the shipping method for each shipment. Only the in stock items would be authorized on the credit card and back ordered items would be charged later via the back end.

I'll add it as a feature request, I cannot say at this point if it will make it into final.

[Psalty]

Thanks Mike for fleshing that out. I know that is probably not a common feature request but one that could be very useful for those that need to manage preorders on hot products.

I am crossing my fingers that someone will find this worthy enough to be added to the final release, but if it is not, how hard would you estimate it to be to have something like that custom developed?

Thanks

[gjaros]

I know that is probably not a common feature request but one that could be very useful for those that need to manage preorders on hot products.

Actually this is a fairly common request that we get from our clients. We have customized backorders and pre-orders using several different scenarios for clients and would love to see an easy way to handle this in AC 7.0 or maybe AC 7.1.

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello,

Another work around. If the pre-order items are always going to ship later (or most always) then it would be easy for force them into their own shipments with warehouses.

You could then set the retail price to the price they 'will be charged' and the price to zero. With a simple explaination in the product description so they understand what's up. When it becomes available you'd simply change the price from zero to X and add a new payment to cover it.

To customize the feature as I've described would take our developers 8 to 16 hours, plus testing. So figure 16 to 32 hours to get all of the functionality I've described.

If you always just forced the items into another shipment and simply were not going to charge for the items until later, I'm guessing you could put a re-worded discount into the basket to offset the non-shipping items in a lot less time then that.

e.g. ORDER TOTAL REDUCTION FOR BACK ORDERED ITEMS -80.00

Actually discounts set to 100% attached to the products could be used like this as another work around.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

This is a worthwhile feature, I would vote to spend a little time making it nice for AC7.1. But with the current version, a person could probably code this in just with modification to the payment page. This is the way I would do it:

1) Create payment methods as Mike suggests, but the public methods should be linked to gateways. The hidden payment methods (allow only for admin group) would not be linked to gateways.

2) In payment page, add bit of custom code that runs when checkout is ready to run (right before basket.checkout). Get the subtotal of ready to ship and backordered items

* If there are only ready to ship items, do nothing.
* if there are only backordered items, change the payment method over to the hidden (non gateway) method. After checkout is successful, obtain the order object and change the payment method back to the public version.
* if there are both kinds of items in the basket, change the amount of the payment to the amount of ready to ship items. Following the successful checkout, obtain the order object and add a second payment for the backordered amount. Use the public method, rather than the hidden.

The only time I would use the hidden method is if you have only backordered items in the basket, and I would only use it to complete the checkout. Checkout automatically tries to process payments, so basically what you are doing is suppressing this feature when there are backordered items. Otherwise, you want to have your payments using a method linked to the gateway, so that you can use the auth/capture buttons in the admin interface.

Going this route, you would be able to use all of the facilities of AbleCommerce. Changes only required in Checkout/PaymentForms/CreditCardPaymentForm.ascx to support this from credit card payments.

[AbleBody]

Logan / Mike,
Any idea if this feature request was added on 7.1? Or is the work around suggested by Logan the only alternative currently? Have a client who is looking for this in her AC 7.0 store...

Thanks!
-sri
sri@awcs.net

[Logan Rhodehamel]

We did not get to work on this feature for 7.1. For the 7.1 release, our focus was improving our ability to handle international commerce - for instance we did quite a bit of work with VAT to enable our Canadian and EU customers.

This feature is not forgotten. It has a bug report that I have moved into the list to be discussed with our feature goals.

[AbleBody]

Thanks Logan. I will work on a customization to get it working in the meantime.. appreciate the quick response!

-sri
sri@awcs.net

[mazhar]

I think when creating separate payments for back ordered items and ready to ship items, we must also take care of basket items other then products. For example discounts, gift wraps, coupons and shipping to adjust the respective payments. For example consider the following case that a customer is trying to place order with one ready to ship item and one back ordered item and some discount is also available on the back ordered item which also will be a basket item. Now when finding the total amounts for ready to ship and back ordered items we must have to take care that discount should be applied to payment created for back order items not into other one. Similarly we have to consider the same situation for shipping rates for some back ordered product, product coupon and gift wraps etc.

So when creating the separate payments for ready to ship and back ordered items take care of each related item as well.

[snap624]

I am still in the trial period for AbleCommerce. I was told by my sales rep that this issue no longer seems to be a priority due to lack of interest. "So, at this point there is no ETA on when this will be added." We realize that work arounds are possible, but would prefer some clean way of addressing the issue. We would like to offer "pre-order items" in our catalog so this is significant for us. Also, related to the issue of partial capture, are orders that contain shippable and non-shippable items. We offer both type of products in our catalog. If a customer has both types of items in their basket, we want the non-shippable item to be fufilled immediately upon successful purchase (meaning that the card will be billed immediately for the item), however, physically goods to be shipped need to be billed upon shipment. Has anyone come up with a clean solution for either of this issues?