Have you come across an instance where a payment is left as "Processing" or "Incomplete" where the "Invoice Transaction Details" are located? Usually, you'll be left with an "UNPAID" invoice and no reconciliation towards if the payment has been made. First, we'll go over why this payment is left as processing/incomplete and afterwards, we will review how to reconcile this.
You may have seen this displayed on the invoice where the type of payment is stuck on this "Processing" or "Incomplete" type. You'll also notice no "Payment Type" or "Paid By" is listed. So as to why this is generated, when an invoice is taking a payment in ASAP, it is displayed as a processing transaction as a placeholder for the payment made. What happens is when a credit card is processed, a transaction is generated from ASAP to your payment gateway that checks to verify if the card used is valid. If your payment gateway is able to verify that all information is correct, what will happen is that they will send back to us what is called a gateway transaction code. This is a unique number that is created when a payment is completed.
As you can see within the steps, the issue with a "processing"/"incomplete" transaction is that some times, when ASAP is requesting for the information to come back to us to update the transaction, there are hang ups that occur when completing the payment. These hang ups are usually tied to when ASAP does not hear a response back quick enough from the payment gateway. When this happens, ASAP keeps the type as "Processing" until a response is made. The issue stems from if ASAP never receives a response back or receives the response too late, the system will keep the payment in this sort of frozen status.
Now, what are some of best practices to handling when these payments are "stuck". Well first off, I would check with my payment gateway directly to see if this transaction had either completed or had been denied. The most important thing we want to do is to make sure that the payment is tied with whatever the transaction code that is created from your payment gateway. In order to obtain this information, you may need to log in or contact your payment gateway to get this information. Not let's go into the different scenarios:
Payment Accepted:
- If the payment was processed by your payment gateway and ASAP had not received a response, we would need to verify that the information is correct and update this on our back end. From there, we will have the payment type and type of transaction updated on our system to make sure that the transaction code is tied back to this invoice.
- If a double charge were to occur where you have both a processing and paid transaction found on the invoice, one of them would need to be refunded. You would have to contact your payment gateway directly in order to process this refund. We would then be able to void this transaction once the refund with your payment gateway has been completed.
Payment Declined:
- If the payment was declined, there are two options we can do. We can either update this transaction to show as "FAILED" and the student can attempt to try purchasing the items on the invoice again or we can void the invoice out. You can also delete this transaction from the invoice completely if you would like to. Remember, once the transaction is deleted, there is no way to bring this information back.
No Payment Recorded:
- If nothing was sent or received by the payment gateway, this particular transaction can be deleted on your end. Following this article here can help get you started on doing this: How do I change the payment method on a transaction record?
Reviewing "Incomplete"/"Processing" Payments in your Organization:
- If you would like to review your system for other processing transactions in the past, the “Transaction Report” filtered for "Transaction Type" = Processing will show “Processing” transactions. Selecting "Transaction Type" = Incomplete will filter for "Incomplete" transactions. To reach this report, you would just need to go to the left nav panel under View Reports > Master Reports. From there, you would need to go to the Financials sections and select the "Transaction Report".
HOP Payment Gateways:
- For those that have a HOP payment gateway, you may see these type of transactions more frequently. This generally occurs when the customer did not complete payment after being transferred to the gateway website. In these cases, the customer had only went into the payment screen but no attempt to complete payment had been done. It is up to the organization to decide how to handle these situations but best practice would be to review the steps above before choosing to remove/keep these payments.