Description
Why are pre-auths from Sage100 creating duplicate transactions in the Paya Virtual Terminal?
Resolution
Sage100 users can process a credit card as a pre-auths (Auth-Only) when they receive an order, and then post-auth (capture/Prior Auth) the transaction once the order ships. Normally the user performs the pre-auth in Sales Order Entry; the post-auth occurs when the Sales Journal is updated for the Sales Order Invoice upon shipping.
Some merchants report that the post-auth is creating a new transaction as a Sale, instead of capturing the original pre-auth.
An Auth Only transaction must be adjusted/captured before it can be settled. The gateway expires unsettled transactions after seven calendar days. Therefore, Auth-Only transactions must be captured and settled within seven calendar days, otherwise, they will expire.
When attempting the post-auth, Sage100 looks in the gateway for the corresponding Auth-Only transaction. If it cannot find it, it will process a new transaction as a sale. There are several reasons that Sage100 may not be able to find the original pre-auth:
- Sage 100 has a setting called the "pre-auth term limit" that tells it how long to leave a pre-auth open before marking it as expired. This needs to be set to "7" to match our gateway. If it is less than seven, then even if the authorization is open in the gateway, Sage 100 will assume it has expired and run a new Sale transaction.
- Alternatively, if the term limit is set higher than "7", it may think that authorization is still useable when it is in fact expired. When it attempts to find the authorization and fails, it will run a new Sale transaction.
- The Auth-Only was manually captured and/or settled in the Virtual Terminal. This action will not push back to Sage100, which will continue to assume the pre-auth is open. When the order is shipped and invoiced, Sage100 will fail to find the pre-auth and run a new Sale transaction.
Please Note: The “pre-auth term limit” is hard-coded to 7 in Versions 5.0+; ie, Sage100 w/ SED.
If you have questions or require additional information, please submit a ticket and we will be in touch with you shortly.
