How Do I Address Recurring Schedules (ARB) in Authorize.net? – RaiseDonors

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I change a recurring schedule (ARB) from "Suspended" to "Active" status?

What is Automatic Retry all about?

Can I create a recurring schedule from a settled one-time donation?

Can I re-charge a donor without asking for their payment information?

What are the different recurring schedule status' and their respective definitions?

Sometimes it appears that a credit card should qualify for Auto Updating, but it is skipped and not updated. Why?

What is Auto Updater and does it work with Recurring Schedules in Authorize.net?

Edge case situations to be aware of in RaiseDonors

Silent Post Url
Credit Card held for Review Status
ACH Held for Review Status
Why is there a small segment of declining ARB charges using Auto Updater services, missing from RaiseDonors?

How can I change a recurring schedule (ARB) from "Suspended" to "Active" status?

If for any reason, a recurring schedule's charge attempt fails, the status of the ARB will change to "Suspended". This is managed and automated by Authorize.net not RaiseDonors. Authorize.net requires an update to the ARB to correct any information which may have led to the declined transaction. You can perform this edit through the RaiseDonors admin portal or directly through Authorize.net. The donor can also perform this action through the donor portal. Once you've enabled Automatic Retry, you are finished and Authorize.net will handle the rest for you.

Here is some additional information directly from Authorize.net support:
You can reactivate a suspended subscription on the ARB Subscription Detail page. Subscriptions with a status of Canceled, Terminated or Expired cannot be reactivated.

Credit card subscriptions can be suspended as a result of authorization or processing errors as well as Address Verification Service (AVS) rejections. If the subscription experiences internal errors, recurring transactions will be re-tried until they are successfully processed.

Because eCheck.Net® transactions are processed by a separate network from credit cards and are not authorized or declined in real time, eCheck.Net subscriptions are not typically suspended or terminated by the payment gateway. Accordingly, it is highly recommended that you monitor your eCheck.Net subscriptions regularly for returns or notices of change in order to resolve any processing issues and successfully maintain your eCheck.Net subscriptions.

IMPORTANT: Suspended subscriptions must be reactivated before the next scheduled transaction occurs, otherwise, the subscription will be terminated.

What is Automatic Retry all about?

Automatic Retry is Authorize.net's solution for handling failed recurring schedules. It will not automatically retry an ARB, without some kind of interaction. Authorize.net assumes if an ARB fails, then the payment method needs to be updated. Once the payment method has been updated, then it will automatically retry. If by chance there are insufficient funds on the credit card, you'll need to manually initiate a retry.

A comprehensive overview and detailed FAQ's from Authorize.net regarding Automatic Retry can be found here. Explanations and detailed information on each possible status from Authorize.net's ARBs can be found here.

Can I create a recurring schedule from a settled one-time donation?

Yes! RaiseDonors is currently working on providing a payment wallet for all donor payments (this feature is not yet live). This will allow you to use any payment method previously used by a customer to create new recurring schedules.

Presently, you can do this through the Authorize.net admin portal interface. More information on how to specifically do this inside of Authorize.net can be found here. Please note, the newly created ARB (schedule) may or may not be imported into RaiseDonors, depending upon your settings. You can read more on these settings here.

Can I re-charge a donor without asking for their payment information?

Presently, you can do this through the Authorize.net admin portal interface. More information on how to specifically do this inside of Authorize.net can be found here. Please note, creating a transaction (one-time) inside of Authorize.net will not be pushed down into RaiseDonors and will not be visible inside of RaiseDonors.

What are the different recurring schedule status' and their respective definitions?

Authorize.net has five defined status' for ARB's. While more information can be read here, we've briefly summarized them here:

Active
1. An active subscription is currently scheduled to be charged at a specified interval, which does not necessarily mean that payments will be successful.
Expired
1. The schedule of payments has ended.
Suspended
1. When the credit card information for a subscription expires, the subscription becomes suspended. A suspended subscription is not charged until the merchant corrects the problem. The merchant has until the next run date to correct the problem, or the subscription is terminated.
Canceled
1. The subscription was cancelled using ARBCancelSubscriptionRequest. A cancelled subscription no longer exists and cannot be reactivated.
Terminated
1. When a merchant takes no action on a suspended account before the next run date, the subscription is terminated. Once terminated, a subscription can no longer be reactivated and must be recreated.

Sometimes it appears that a credit card should qualify for Auto Updating, but it is skipped and not updated. Why?

It is important to note that cardholders are typically able to opt-out of the Account Updater service with their issuer, which may play a role in what information the Account Updater has on file and/or why stored payment data is not updated when the Account Updater runs.

What is Auto Updater and does it work with Recurring Schedules in Authorize.net?

Auto Updater is a tremendously valuable solution for your organization to help retain sustaining donors. There are dozens of possibilities, but the Auto Updater attempts to collect updated credit card information when a donors credit card expires, or when a new credit card is issued to a donor. This updated credit card information automatically replaces existing credit cards for donors and updates the recurring schedule so that the recurring schedule can continue! The full FAQ from Authorize.net can be found here.

Experience shows that while the Auto Updater does not cover 100% of all situations, the majority of situations that it does cover can be extremely valuable. You can get a preview of credit cards present in active ARB's by visiting the ARB service page in Authorize.net. The table includes a column which displays the number of expiring credit cards. Notice you can also adjust the "month" so you can view future and past expiring credit cards which the Auto Updater service addresses.

Edge case situations to be aware of in RaiseDonors

Silent Post URL

RaiseDonors currently relies on the "silent post URL" feature of Authorize.net. This is a simple notification feature in which Authorize.net pushes out information on various events happening in Authorize.net. RaiseDonors listens for all of the events sent by Authorize.net through the silent post URL, and takes appropriate actions when needed. The most common example of this is when an ARB is charged successfully or declined. Moving forward, RaiseDonors will leverage the new and improved notification system offered by Authorize.net, webhooks. Presently with the silent post URL, the following situations (not common) presented gaps or needed work arounds. But when the implementation of webhooks is completed in RaiseDonors, these situations will no longer be applicable.

Credit Card Held for Review Status

When a credit card charge is caught by the Authorize.net fraud settings (AVS, velocity, IP filter, etc), its status can be set to "held for review". When this happens, the charge has not yet taken place, and is in a pending state requiring further action, but the donor will receive a success message on the donation page. When you review these transactions, you can later approve them and the charge will go through. Unfortunately, the silent post url functionality does not receive this kind of activity and thus, the change from "held for review" to "approved" is not sent to RaiseDonors. So RaiseDonors is not aware of this charge or change. It is unfortunate that the silent post url does not include this activity. As mentioned above, when the new notification system is in place, RaiseDonors will be aware of this activity and donations will be updated. In the mean time, if you need to have a donation that has been approved reflected as such in RaiseDonors, please send an email to help@raisedonors.com with the transaction ID, and we can make the appropriate change(s).

ACH Held for Review Status

If an ACH charge from an ARB generates a status of "held for review", it is technically a "decline" and will be recorded in RaiseDonors as such. Associated information on the donation will indicate "held for review". If the ACH charge later changes its status from "held for review" to "approved", Authorize.net does not push that update through the silent post URL; meaning RaiseDonors is not made aware of this update.

Why is there a small segment of declining ARB charges using Auto Updater services, missing from RaiseDonors?

There is a "perfect recipe" that creates this edge case situation. It involves the day of the month of the ARB, the day of the month the Updater Service runs, the month the credit card expires, and the unfortunate fact that Authorize.net will not push "General Error" transactions through the silent post URL, meaning RaiseDonors is never notified.

When a donor has an expired credit card, the ARB schedule will not fire, causing a change in the schedule status to become "Suspended", and a related transaction is auto created with the status of "General Error". And because that is not pushed through Authorize.net's silent post URL, RaiseDonors is never notified of this decline/error event. In one scenario where this happened, after digging into that customers ARB schedule and looking at the related payment profile (ie: CC), that charge now shows a future expiration date - it had been updated by the Auto Updater service.
This is extremely uncommon and what we learned from Authorize.net is -- there are specific dates when the Auto Updater service runs.

The Account Updater service starts on the 14th (12:00 AM UTC) of every month, then runs in batches to obtain all of the necessary updates. Depending on the total monthly volume of eligible updates, it can take up to the end of the month for all account updates to complete. If you are signing up for Account Updater for the first time (or have previously disabled and are now re-enabling the service), you will get updates for that current month if you enable it before the 13th. If you enable it after the 13th, you will not see any updates for the current month, but will start seeing updates the following month.
Reports for Account Updater will be available the following month (ex: June's update report will be available in July).

Here is an example piecing this scenario together:

A donor's CC expires on 08/2019
The ARB schedule is set to run monthly, on the 10th
The ARB is currently in an "active" status, with past successful transactions
The next charge date is set for August 10th

In this situation -- as time approaches August 10th, Authorize.net will not attempt a charge of the ARB, because the card expired on August 1st. Authorize.net will automatically change this ARB schedule to Cancelled and create a "General Error" transaction. General Error transactions are not pushed through the silent post URL, so RaiseDonors is never notified.

What is the work around?

Any ARB schedule having a monthly frequency, set to charge between the 1st and 14th, needs to be flagged for monitoring on the month and year of the cards expiration date.

Any ARB having a monthly frequency set to charge between the 15th and end of month, will be updated through the Auto Updater, and only needs to be flagged for monitoring if the Auto Updater service does not successfully update the expiration date.

Ensure a team member in your organization logs into Authorize.net and subscribes to Merchant notifications. At a minimum, we recommend the following:

Subscription Due for Expiration
Credit Card Expiration
Subscription Suspension

Additionally, you can check out the ARB service page inside Authorize.net periodically and see which ARB's have expiring credit cards. You can actually change the "month" in the drop down list - and go forward in time. So you can look forward 60, 90, 120+ days and know which cards are set to expire.

This will allow your team to know when a ARB is coming into an issue (ie: expired CC), or when it has turned into an issue.

In summary, the vast majority of ARB declines ARE sent to RaiseDonors through the silent post URL and RaiseDonors will take the appropriate next steps as needed for those declined donations!