Old Fashioned credit card processing

I have gotten my hands on credit card machine that will process transactions the old fashioned way via a phone line. The machine does not have the ability to hook up to a pc and therefore I wont have the ability to tie these transactions into my history / activity. I have a few questions regarding this:

1) what are the implications of not having the CC history? 2) is there an effective way to enter some sort of tracking number at POS from the credit card that will allow me to tie the CC slip to a specfic transaction?

Any other tips on this would be great.

Michael

Reply to
mhodgdon
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Why do you want to use the separate cc machine when it's so easy to have RMS do it?

IMHO, it sounds like a royal pain...two separate receipts that you and the customer have to hang on to. It's one more thing to reconcile. Ugh. Assuming there's some cost savings motivating this, divide that expense over the 2-3 years you'd expect your equipment to last (bare minimum) and you're talking pennies a day.

"mhodgd> I have gotten my hands on credit card machine that will process transactions

Reply to
Juli

We do not have our cc integrated. Seems like more of a pain....with all the posts about closing "batches" and losing money from lost batches. Whatever. We don't do batches...yet. But we may have to when we integrate Quickboooks this year.

Make a general tender type called "Manual Credit Cards" or whatever name you want.

You can make the tender type credit card, but then the system will prompt you for the card number which is a pain so don't chose this one.

If you make it a CHECK type, the system will prompt you for the customers check number and you can also enter their DL number (you may use this now)....instead of entering the check number you could enter the "confirmation" number from the credit card receipt... Or, you can make it "other" tender type and not worry about putting in the confirmation number.

Why do you need it? We do not keep this number. Just say the person paid $x by manual Credit Card, and give them the credit card receipt to sign, (We file these away by month.) then give them their RMS receipt. 99.99% of people do not WANT the credit card receipt. Our cc machine asks if you want to print an extra copy for the customer...we never do.

If someone wants to charge back their credit card, you are going to have to dig out the signature receipts anyway--the confirmation number doesn't do anything!

"mhodgd> I have gotten my hands on credit card machine that will process transactions

Reply to
Mickie

Reply to
Craig

I guess we're all just more comfortable with what we're familiar with.

I'm a small retailer, not a programmer and I've been able to do it myself. The setup takes only a couple of minutes and if tested properly (which I'd do even with a stand-alone), you shouldn't have any problems. Settling the batch might be different. Although it only takes a couple of seconds each night (less than running a Z report), for some retailers, the closing employee might not have security access to let them settle the batch at the end of the night. We don't have that problem.

The original poster was concerned about a way to tie the cc transaction to the RMS transaction. In integrated processing, this is a given. And it's been helpful for me. I've had situations where customers are returning products without a receipt and, as long as the sale was entered on their account, I can instantly tell which cc they used to credit them back. We sell some special order items, so customers will sometimes ask me to verify which cc they used on their deposit when they decide which cc to use when they pay their balance. Of course the number is masked but I can tell them the cc type and last 4 digits.

Reply to
Juli

Can you tell me exactly how you do the integrated credit cards? What steps do you do?

We do not Z out or close every computer that has entered orders. We have one cash register where we do that...the other computers just enter Work orders all day.

It scares me with all the people posting on here about losing hundreds of dollars because something went wrong in some batch or something.

Juli wrote:

Reply to
Mickie

Mickie, I've written what feels like war-and-peace. Sorry. What kind of business are you in that you have so many workorders?

Reply to
Juli

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