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General Info  

This system was developed by us to enable you to easily bill your members on a monthly basis. It is being used by large and small ISPs. Essentially, this program helps you create a text file that you can "Batch Upload" into your Authorize.net merchant account.  Additionally, it gives you the means to see expiring credit cards, update your member billing info, and handle declined cards.

Note: You do not need this system to initially bill your members if you use our Rockstar software or our instant activation scripts. These two signup methods will do the initial month's billing automatically.  But, those two methods will not bill your members on a recurring basis.  This billing system is to specifically give you the means for recurrent billing.

This system is separate from your ISP Control Panel.  The databases are not connected.  If you remove a member from the billing database, you will need to also delete the member from your control panel.

This billing system works seamlessly with the Rockstar software, and if you use the instructions below, you will easily bill your membership each month. However, if you use other methods for signing up members you will need to manually add members to your database.

This system is free for you to use, except for a one-time $300 programming charge to get your database interface setup.  You are still responsible for all merchant account costs and any chargebacks.

Test Drive: You can Login for a test drive of the system using the ID of 123 and a password of password.

Instructions  

Billing System Terminology:

Billing Member - these are the members that you will bill using the system.

Billing Date - this is the date that you will run your billing.

Next Billing Date - the date which, on or after, you want to bill any given member.  As long as the "Next Billing Date" is before the Billing Date (as defined above), your member will be billed. If you don't want a member to be billed, then you can move the "Next Billing Date" a month or more in time. This gives you the opportunity to give a "free month" or accept quarterly or annual payments.

4 Digit cc expiration - Example - 0405 is April 2005.  This is the type of expiration date that authorize.net needs to process the credit cards.

8 Digit cc expiration - Example - 20050420 is April 20, 2005 We use these dates to easily keep track of who's cards are expiring.

When to run your billing:

You should run your billing on or about the 25th of each month. The billing should be in advance for the coming month.  For example, run you June billing on May 25th.

This system gives you time to contact members with expired and declined cards before you have to pay for their account for the coming month.  If members can't pay, you should either delete or suspend their accounts in your Control Panel. (Note: suspending an account does not relieve you of paying us for the account, its simply a tool for you to use to apply pressure for the payment.)

The Billing Menu:

Add New Member: Allows you to add a new member that you signed up manually or by some method other than the Rockstar software.

List Billing Members: Gives you a quick listing and a total count of all of your members who are setup for billing.

View a member's data: Lets you see the full database for one member.

Edit a member's data: Lets you easily update an expiration date, price, address, etc. for a specific member.

Remove a member from billing: Completely removes the member from the billing system.

Change your membership's pricing: This is a global change to your pricing.  All members will be updated to the new price.

Create your Main billing file: This creates the Main billing file that you will upload to authorize.net  It creates a text line for each member in the database that hasn't been tagged for Late billing.

Create your Late billing file: This is a place where you can put your members with billing problems.  It also can be used to generate a similar text file as the Main Billing, where you can re-attempt to bill members who were declined earlier.

Move a member to or from LATE billing: This tags the member for late billing.  If authorize.net gave you an error on line 15, for example, you could identify the member on line 15, and use this tool to move him to late billing.  Then you could run the late billing file each day until you successfully bill the member.  Once they are billed, you use the same tool to return the member to the Main billing file.

Expiring Cards: A tool used to list members whose credit cards will be expiring before a certain date.

Recommended Procedures:

By the 10th of the month get a list of Expiring Cards and start contacting members to get the new expiration dates.  Authorize.net will fail your entire billing over 1 expired card.

Routinely audit your database for accuracy.  This is your responsibility as the billing company.

On or about the 25th of the month, create the main billing file. Copy it into Notepad (or other text editor), remove the top 3 lines of text. Save the file as something like c:\mydocuments\august_billing.txt  Then, go into https://secure.authorize.net and login.   Click on Batch Uploads.  Then, mark "Upload a batch of new transactions." and click the GO button. Browse for your file and use  the Upload button to send it to authorize.net.

Expired cards will cause the billing to fail.  Use the "Move a member to Late billing" tool to send those members to late billing.  Then recreate your Main billing file and re-upload it. It should run this time with the expired cards out of the way.

In authorize.net go to Transaction Activity and mark Download Transactions.  Download your batch for today.  Lines coded with a 2 or 3 were declined or had errors.  Identify those members from those line numbers and move them to Late billing.

At this point, you have successfully billed all of your members who don't have expired credit cards or who haven't receive a new card, or haven't overdrawn their account (reached their limit.) You only have the late billing file to deal with.  How you do this is up to you, but below is what we recommend.

Contact each of the Late billing members and attempt to get updated information.  When you do, go into authorize.net, go to the Virtual Terminal, and bill them by hand.  Then move the member back to main billing. Remember to Edit the Member's data in the database using that tool from the menu.

Keep working on the Late billing until you have all possible members billed.  For the member's you can't contact, you may want to delete them in your control panel and remove them from the billing system. (2 step process, the databases are not linked.)

Authorize.net Configuration

In authorize.net go to Settings, mark Transaction Batch Upload Settings and click the GO button.

Set the following:

E-mail customer - No

Apply AVS filter - Yes or No (No is recommended)

Apply CVV2 filter - No

Default field separator - , (comma)

Default encapsulation character - ' (single quote)

Field Inclusion Settings:

Fields not listed below must be excluded

Description - 1

Amount - 3

Payment Method - 2

Credit Card Number - 4

Card expiration date - 5

Customer First Name - 6

Customer Last Name - 7

Customer Address - 8

Customer City - 9

Customer State - 10

Customer Zip - 11

Click the Submit Button