potential actinic payments problems with slow internet connection

[seb]

We use actinic payments with actinic version 10.0.4, i thought people should be aware of a problem we have had with some payments.

Once we are happy with a payment we commit to it within actinic which then shows the payment outstanding balance as 0.00 the payment will also show received.

However logging in to actinic payments online some of these payments that have been commited still show uncommited, the only reason i can think for this happening is due to slow internet speed the transfer of the transaction is 'timing out'.

In the last year i have had 23 transaction totalling £2631.75 that i have assumed have been paid looking at my software that in fact have not and of course over a certain period you cannot commit to the payment.

So i would encourage everyone to cross reference their payments online to be certain they have been commited, and actinic please let me know how you are going to recover these funds for me.

[seb]

...............

[cbarling]

Stephen,

Sorry to hear this.

You should do the missing commits manually through the Admin panel wherever you still can. You may get charged a little more by your acquirer, but certainly recent commits should go through and the cost, if any, will be relatively small. This needs to be combined with an email to the customer explaining that they haven't been charged when they should have been.

We strongly recommend that everyone carries out regular reconciliation between Actinic desktop, Actinic Payments and the Bank. The easy way of doing this is explained here in a KB article.

I have asked our development team to look into this and they will no doubt soon post on this thread. But the main communication will be through the support team, do you have am existing ticket number?

Chris

[seb]

hi chris, i appreciate the reply, i have sent you an email.

[seb]

....well after reporting this problem to actinic back in November here we are in mid April and i have had no assurance that anything might be done about this issue.
and no solution as to how i might recover funds.

I have to say im incredibly disapointed that actinic appear not to see this as serious issue and it gives me zero confidence.

We shall be moving away from actinic as soon as i can..........

[guccij]

How do you manage your bookkeeping? I'm frankly astounded that your back office didn't pick up that your bank balance was down by over two grand. It's unfair I feel to place the blame for this squarely at Actinic's feet, especially as no-one else is reporting anything similar.
We do our bank reconciliations at least every two days - and we're by no means small players. Your accountant may be able to offer you advice on how to take things forward.

[Benjamin Dyer]

Hi Seb,

Did you carry out the reconciliation report as suggested by Chris?

Ben

[seb]

How do you manage your bookkeeping? I'm frankly astounded that your back office didn't pick up that your bank balance was down by over two grand. It's unfair I feel to place the blame for this squarely at Actinic's feet, especially as no-one else is reporting anything similar.
We do our bank reconciliations at least every two days - and we're by no means small players. Your accountant may be able to offer you advice on how to take things forward.

i hear what you say, and yes i accept that our bookkeeper should have picked up on this earlier, but when we started using actinic payments we were told how to use it and of course read through the help section.

which states;

Commit If you have set your payments to be pre-authorised (see Actinic Payments for details) you can 'Commit' the payment by clicking this button.
This means that the money will actually be taken from the customer's account.

we were not informed of the reconcilliation process that is linked to by chris above.....and indeed it seems like this was an after thought (maybe due to this problem) as it was only posted in December 2011......and other than pouring over the forum everyday how else would i have known that information was there......

...and the fact that no one else is reporting the problem doesnt mean a lot to me im afraid.......thats like the bad chef that says "well no one else complained". We have a terrible broadband connection here so it is possible im the only one using actinic software who is likely to come up with this problem.....

...at the very least actinic should write in an error message if after you hit commit the payment is not actioned.

[seb]

Hi Seb,

Did you carry out the reconciliation report as suggested by Chris?

Ben

My bookeeper was using the reconciliation reports, but not in exactly the same way that is mentioned in the link chris provided. Im aware of the problem now so it won't happen again.

I'd already been using actinic payments for over a year before that post was created, so it smacks to me of after thought.

And rather than putting a post in a forum that not every user is going to use, i would suggest it more pertinent to contact your customers directly.

[guccij]

We have a terrible broadband connection here

That's your problem in a nutshell. Moving to a different type of software won't help.

[seb]

That's your problem in a nutshell. Moving to a different type of software won't help.

indeed....but software that has been thoroughly tested and well thought out could well have alerted me to the fact that a payment i have commited has not actually been debited from my customers account.

Its all very well to state our bookkeeping should have spotted it, but its actinic payments job to process the transaction and this hasnt happened....

[guccij]

My last word: keep your books up to date. It's up to you to make sure your numbers add up.

[seb]

My last word: keep your books up to date. It's up to you to make sure your numbers add up.

we reconcile weekly... i will pass on your thoughts to our bookeeper thank you for your input.....

[cbarling]

With respect to the general comments about reconciliation, everybody should always reconcile their payments. This isn't something particular to Actinic payments. Banks sometimes choose to not settle "authorised" transactions and there can be all sorts of causes of other problems. Having said that, in the case being discussed here, it's not down to the bank and it appears to be a problem between Actinic and Creditcall.

Actinic developed a new report, introduced a while ago (from memory it was 10.0.3), to make end-to-end reconciliation of Actinic Payments as easy as possible. It's something I have been pushing and I have also pushed to get the Knowledge Base article that supports it as good as possible. So it's not an after-thought, it's part of the ongoing development of Actinic Payments.

With regards to failed commits, there have been reports of these from time to time but we haven't ever managed to track down the cause. There are three possible culprits: Actinic, Creditcall or the environment. The point made by Seb that if a commit fails it should be indicated is a fair one. Our developers have previously looked at the area and assured me that they are receiving a call from Creditcall saying the transaction is OK, but Creditcall have also looked at it and said there isn't a problem. Clearly we can't both be right.

I have asked the development team to do further work and we will be adding some additional tracking code to the next maintenance release to try to help us investigate further when we next get a report.

I'm sorry that you've had this problem. As I said, it is rare. It's one of the problems that is a nightmare to fix because it can't be reproduced, but we won't give up until it's solved.

Chris