What it does
The 'Credit card charges' update examines all the subscriptions for the publications you specify and creates a file from which you transmit credit card charge information to your bank or credit card company. It searches for orders that have credit card charges you've not yet processed (e.g. they have an "unprocessed credit card amount" field that is nonzero). When it's done, the update sets the unprocessed credit card amounts to zero and replaces the CVV2 code (if applicable) with asterisks for those orders. You then transmit your file to your bank or credit card company.
Credit card companies generally require that charges for Internet orders be processed through a separate account than the one used for mail or phone orders. If you accept orders via the Internet and have flagged these orders with credit card payment type codes (e.g. "VI" for Visa Internet orders) the update will split the charges into two files, one for regular mail or phone orders and the other for Internet orders.
When to run it
You need to run this update only if you're accepting credit card payments. You can run it as often as seems appropriate for your credit card volume. If you run the update and there are no unprocessed credit card payments then no harm is done; it will simply produce no output.
Warning - do not store the credit card charge files any longer than you have to
The credit card charge files produced by this update include credit card numbers and their associated customer names in plain text. This is unavoidable since the credit card processors that read these files do not allow for encrypted card numbers. For this reason you should delete the files as soon as you know that they have been accepted by the credit card processor. If you fail to do this, a thief who stole your computer could easily use the files to obtain handy lists of card numbers and names. Not only that, he would know that the card numbers had been recently used and were therefore likely to still be valid.
How to run it
Follow these steps when you run the credit card update.
Step 1—Back up your database
If the 'Credit card charges' update fails to run to completion, you cannot restart it. You must restore your database and start the update again. So it's extremely important that you make a backup before running the update.
Step 2—Specify the publications to be processed
Select 'Credit card charges' under 'Updates' on the main menu and fill in the blank fields you see on the screen.
Company name
QuickFill prints the name you enter in this field on the credit card update report. This name will not be in the credit card files themselves.
Date the charges ____ days after the current date
Some card processing formats include a processing date field (as opposed to the order date). The date calculated from this field will be used for those formats. For example, if you are going to run the update on July 15, but would like July 17 to be specified as the processing date for your charges, enter "2" in this field. You can also specify past dates by entering negative numbers. For example, if you are going to run the update on July 15, but would like July 12 to be the processing date, enter "-3" in this field.
If you leave this field blank, QuickFill automatically uses today's date as the processing date.
Publications to be processed
Choose the publications for which you want to run the credit card forms update by double clicking on the publication name or clicking in the checkbox for the publication(s) you want to include. An "x" will appear in the box in front of the publication name. Click on "Select All" to select all publications.
When you're done, click on "OK" and a message box will appear with the following options:
Run it now exclusively, only lookup allowed
Run it now shared, all transactions allowed, much slower
Run it with tonight's jobs
Save to an existing job list
Create a new job list
Click here for details on options for running updates.
Step 3—Run the update
Before the update begins to run, you'll see a warning message. This message lets you know that you must restore your database from a backup if the update fails to run to completion. It then asks if you have an up-to-date backup of your database. Choose "No," and QuickFill returns you to the 'Updates' menu. Choose "Yes," and the update will begin to run. Clearly, we want to emphasize that it's extremely important to make backups of your database regularly. Please take the time to make them.
You can follow the update's progress with the box that pops up on the screen while the update is running. QuickFill executes the 'Credit card charges' update in three steps:
It examines all the subscriptions to the publication(s) you've selected to see which orders have pending charges.
It sorts these orders into the proper sequence (we tell you what that sequence is below).
It creates a file which you can transmit to your card processing company. In addition, the 'Credit card charges' update creates an update report.
What it produces
QuickFill produces credit card charge files for use with a number of credit card processing packages. (Click here for a list of the computer readable credit card output formats.) These format options allow credit card payments to be submitted electronically. If you are using a processing package that is not currently supported by QuickFill, please contact CWC Software's Technical Support.
Credit card update report
QuickFill produces a report for each publication selected. The report lists the number of charges the update produced and the total dollar amount for each type of credit card.