When you look at an order using a credit card for which you have online credit card processing set up, you will see a control panel at the bottom of the order.

For each order, you can perform authorizations, sales, voids, and issue credits. You may need to edit the amount of the order, in cases of charges for partial shipments or due to adjustments in tax or shipping calculations.

When you make charges or authorizations for an order, an indication of what has been done appears next to the credit card logo.

You can submit only one charge for each order using the "Sale" button at the bottom of the order page. This helps to avoid accidentally charging customers twice. If you want to adjust charges, use one of the following strategies.

• Use the "Manual Transactions" page (linked off the Store Manager in the Process column) to perform a manual transaction.
• If you haven't yet submitted the batch* for this order, you can void the original charge and put through a new charge for the correct amount.

Note: If you are using PayPal Website Payments Pro, there are no batches to submit--transactions are processed immediately. You can however use the Refund Transaction button to return all or partial funds from a sale.

For most processors including Paymentech, clicking "Sale" marks the order for being submitted, but the transaction is not actually sent to your financial institution until batches are submitted that night. If you want to submit a batch sooner than that, click the "Submit Batch" button (on the Manual Transactions page) at the end of each day's transactions.

Real-time Authorizations

When real-time authorizations are done, you will see a message such as Authorized: AC8124 next to the credit card logo when you look at the order.

Special Transactions

The Manual Transactions link under the Process column allows you to do special or custom transactions. This may be useful if you receive credit card orders in some other way and want to process them through your merchant account, or if you need to perform special charges or refunds. You can also review previously submitted batches.

Using AVS

The AVS (Address Verification System) is a feature of the credit card network which compares the billing address of an order with the address the credit card statement is mailed to. You should be wary of shipping orders for which the addresses don't match. AVS is only available inside the US -- cards issued outside the US will usually report "AVS Unavailable".

Both the street address and the zip code are checked. The address match can fail for some kinds of addresses, even when the address is effectively the same. For instance, "123 first st." and "123 1st st." probably won't match.