Credit Card Step By Step - Part 2 - Single Payment

This "Step-by-Step" series is intended to provide you with an orderly progression of procedures and procedural considerations.

The actual details and expansive explanations are contained elsewhere in the Help pages and will be referred to by link to follow at the end of each page, where applicable.

This Step-by-Step page is dedicated to all aspects concerning Single Credit Card Payments.

When you have completed a full review of all the steps, you should be:

Able to post a single credit card payment
Able to save credit card information
Able to read the payment details from the transaction
Familiar with running the reconcile

Posting A Single Credit Card Payment

The Credit Card Payment Tasks menu pops up after selecting the 'Credit Card' button on the Debtor screen.

Credit Card Payment Tasks

If this is the first time you are accessing this screen, since logging into Collect! today, you will be prompted to enter your Billing Tree Credit Card login credentials.

Billing Tree Credit Card PIN

Once you enter your Source Key and PIN, they stay in effect until you sign out of Collect!.

Only User Levels 1, 10 and 99 will see the prompt each time they access a Credit Card Payment Tasks menu if the site has set up a global login for the module. These user levels simply click OK to advance to the next screen when they get the login popup prefilled with the global credentials. The popup exists to offer higher level users the opportunity to login to the Billing Tree interface with different logins, in the event that the site uses multiple sets of credentials to control permission levels (i.e. max amount allowed to process).

Click 'Run a Transaction' to open the Single Credit Card Transaction screen.

Single Credit Card Transaction

Some of the fields will be auto-filled for you as the window opens. Credit card information that you enter will be stored in the Debtor Detail tab.

Be aware that this does overwrite any information that is currently stored in the Debtor Detail 2 and Debtor Detail 3 fields. Alternatively, you can save the information to the Cosigner and Collect! will create a new Cosigner record with the Class designation of CC Payer. Older versions of Collect! use "Other" as the Class.

If you are permitted by regional law and your client to charge a convenience fee, you must have set these preferences in your Billing Tree Setup, AND in the Advanced Client Settings screen for each Client for whom you wish to have the charges applied to their debtors. You also need to identify in the Setup screen which transaction type code will be used to charge the convenience fee.

Client Settings screen

That will enable the check box on the Single Credit Card Transaction window to be checked or unchecked to charge the fee. If you have set up a flat fee in your transaction code default, you will see that amount auto-fill. If you have not preset the amount, you will have the ability to enter the amount of the fee in the Fee field. Checking the the 'Apply Fee' box in this window turns the switch ON for this transaction. Not checking the box will keep the switch disabled and NOT charge the fee for this transaction.

Some information in the popup will be auto-filled for you and the rest requires input. A field-by-field description of entry fields may be found on the Help page called Single Credit Card Transaction.

Special points of note on this intake screen are:

a) A valid billing address for the card holder is required.

b) A valid 2-character state code is required.

c) A valid zip code is required. The transaction will be rejected if an attempt to put in a placeholder, non-valid zip is attempted in the absence of one which is known.

d) If you enabled convenience fees for this debtor's client, the check box will be accessible and require your endorsement to charge the convenience fee by checking the "Apply fee" box first, before you see the fee amount populate.

You can fill in the rest of the details. Check the "Save credit card details" box if you wish to retain PCI compliant information from the card.

Click the SUBMIT button when all intake information is completed and you are ready to send the transaction to Billing Tree.

Ready to Submit Single Credit Card Transaction

The module lets you know immediately if the credit card is accepted and the payment is approved.

Credit Card Transaction Approved

The payment and the fee transactions, will be posted to the Transactions Tab on the debtor file.

Credit Card Transactions Posted

A Single Credit Card Payment is posted when you click the SUBMIT button and upload the transaction immediately to the Credit Card Gateway. If the card clears, you will receive an immediate approval and posting in Collect!.

Save Credit Card Info

The " Save credit card info" switch is ON and greyed out. You can select either "To Debtor" or "To Cosigner" but Collect! has to store the credit card information when you are using Billing Tree for recurring payments.

The switch to "Save credit card info" enables you to update your debtor screen with any new address or name information. To update this information, click the radio button labeled "To debtor" and a dot will appear beside the field.

This will also save the credit card information to the Debtor Detail tab on the main debtor screen.

Credit Card Info Saved to Debtor Detail

Detail 2 is the masked Credit Card Number.

Detail 3 is the Credit Card type.

Detail 4 is Billing Tree's unique Client Number for the stored client. *** IMPORTANT: Don't change this number!

Be aware that this does overwrite any information that is currently stored in the Debtor Detail 2, Debtor Detail 3, and Debtor Detail 4 fields. Alternatively, you can save the information to the Cosigner and Collect! will create a new Cosigner record.

Save Credit Card Info To Cosigner

You can save all the Name, Address and Credit Card information to a new Cosigner window, if the payer is not the Debtor. Collect! will set the Cosigner class to CC Payer.

Name, Address and Credit Card Info Saved to Cosigner

User 3 is the masked Credit Card Number.

User 4 is the Credit Card type.

At any given time, Collect! only stores one CC Payer Cosigner and one Recurring Credit Card Payments Schedule per file.

When if you save the credit card information to the Cosigner, the Client # is still stored in the Debtor Detail 4 field because the stored client is always the Debtor.

Client Number in Debtor Detail

Detail 4 is Billing Tree's unique Client Number for the stored client. *** IMPORTANT: Don't change this number!

Leave this switch ON for the duration of your payment schedule so that Collect! can verify the credit card information for the payer in the CC Payer Cosigner window during electronic reconciliations with Billing Tree.

Transaction Detail Tab

Processing confirmation details are stored in the Transaction Detail tab when your Credit Card payments are finalized.

Transaction Details

User 1 is the Authorization Code.

User 2 this field stores the Payer's name if the Payer is not the Debtor.

User 3 is the masked Credit Card Number.

User 6 displays "Processed" for successful submits.

User 7 is the unique Transaction Reference Number assigned to this credit card payment.

Payment details are stored in the Transaction Detail Tab when you submit the Single Credit Card payment.

Transaction Details

Reconcile Credit Card History

The Reconcile Credit Card History is a batch process that queries Billing Tree for all credit card payments processed by them but which have not yet been posted in Collect! via the module. The parameters include those transactions processed by Billing Tree since the Last Reconcile date stored in Collect!. This will include any payments which any Debtors have made directly on the Billing Tree website, provided they have used their Collect! file number as their unique identifier on the Gateway website.

Reconcile Credit Card History

Debtors may enter their own payments directly at the Credit Card Gateway provided they are advised to use their Collect! file number as their unique account number identifier.

Credit Card Transactions Posted

To download the latest batch of credit card approved payments not yet posted in Collect!, you access through the menu path of " Daily Administration\ Payments and Charges\Reconcile Credit Card History". Selecting this process will query Billing Tree for all approved transactions, declines/reversals and externals not yet posted in Collect! at the time the Reconcile is querying the Billing Tree Gateway.

You are responsible for ensuring that Reconciles are run for all logins being used at your site as each login may only Reconcile those transaction entered while under the SAME login credentials.

Sites using only a global login to the Credit Card Gateway do not need to be concerned about multi-login reconciliations.

Users of CV11.6.2.7 and higher who are also licensed for the Scheduler Module now have an enhanced automation with the addition of the Reconcile process being added to the Scheduler Task list of options. You may run this process offline and unattended. Contact us at sales@collect.org for module pricing.

Once the process completes, you will see a summary popup screen to let you know what information was uploaded and downloaded. If payments cannot be matched, i.e. if there was a file number entry error, then the module writes an exception file containing the unmatched externals that require manual review.

Reconcile Credit Card History Results

If any unmatched transactions are returned, the module stores the information in a file in the path "CV11\bin\BillingTree\CreditCard\Unmatched". The filename will contain a date/time stamp so that each report has a unique name in the folder.

If a credit card is declined when an attempt is made by Billing Tree to process a recurring payment, then Collect! processes the payment as "Declined" and uses your settings from the Credit Card Setup options.

Credit Card Setup

As of version CV11.6.2.9, if a file number match is made during reconciliation but the transaction is skipped or errored out for any reason, you will now see a Noteline logged to the specific debtor account that the transaction belongs to identifying what was skipped or errored. The noteline will be prefixed "Failed Transaction:" and indicate that an "Error" occurred, as well as provide the Payment Date and amount. This is a transaction that would need to be manually reviewed for what caused the issue and corrective action would depend on what was ascertained as root cause (i.e. was the transaction manually modified between upload of transaction and download of process confirmation).

It also writes a detailed log into the path "CV11\bin\BillingTree\CreditCard\usaepay.txt".

The series section Credit Card Step by Step - Part 4 - Reconcile is where you will find topic specific information on processing the returns.