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Automatic Recurring Billing (ARB)

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John Mackenzie
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Automatic Recurring Billing (ARB) is a feature used to set up automatic billing to bill a member's credit card or ACH payment each month. This feature allows you to set up billing items that will automatically charge your member's credit card or debit their checking account at specified intervals.

Before you can use this feature, you must first have an Authorize.net or Beanstream gateway (ARB will not work with PayPal). To use Auto Recurring Billings for credit cards in Authorize.net, you must add the ARB option to your Authorize.net account. Log in to your Authorize.Net account to set up the ARB option. 

CardPointe gateways set up prior to January 2022 have ARB functionality available for recurring credit card charges, but do not allow for ACH payments. If you set up a CardPointe gateway directly with CardConnect after January 2022, ARB functionality will not be available for your gateway in MC Trade.

To use ACH features to automatically debit your members' checking accounts, you must add the eChecks feature to your Authorize.net gateway account. Log in to your Authorize.Net account to set up the eChecks option. Note: The eChecks application is lengthy and may take a week or more for Authorize.net to approve once submitted. You must check the 'PPD' and 'CCD' options when completing Section 2 of Authorize.Net's eChecks application for the MC Trade ARB feature to work properly. (See sample below.) These options will allow you to accept personal checking and savings accounts from your members, plus corporate checking accounts.

Once you have your ARB and/or eChecks features added to your Authorize.net account (or use Bambora or a qualified CardPointe gateway), complete the following steps to set up ARB in MC Trade:

  1. Go to Admin > Global Settings, then click Integrations > Credit Card Gateways. Check Enable ARB.
  2. Once you have checked Enable ARB, click Actions/Edit for the gateway(s) you want to enabled.
  3. Check the box for ARB .
  4. Check the box for AuthNet_eCheck if you have a eCheck account set up with Authorize.net
    If you check either of these boxes and you do not have an ARB and/or eCheck account created with Authorize.net, you will experience error messages when trying to create Automatic Recurring Billing items in MC Trade.
     
  5. Once you check the ARB checkbox, this will enable the Automatic Recurring Billing flag on your New Billing screen. Set up a new or flag a Payment Type to be used as ACH (Admin > Manage Codes > Revenue Codes > Payment Types). Be sure to set the ACH Type Flag and set the gateway to process through your new eCheck gateway.
     
  6. Bambora (formerly Beanstream) Customers: 
    Make sure values in MC Trade Credit Card Gateways are filled in for:
    - Bambora Username
    - Bambora Password
    - Bambora Merchant ID (if you are a US merchant, you'll need to fill in the US Merchant ID field in the desktop version of MC Trade)
    - Bambora ARB Passcode
    - Bambora Reporting Passcode
    Note: the desktop application still displays a "Silent Post URL" but this is no longer the method used to retrieve ARB charges and create invoices/payments. 
  7. Authorize.NET Customers:  
    Make sure values in MC Trade Credit Card Gateways are filled in for:
    - AuthNet API Login 
    - AuthNet API TransKey
     
  8. Card Connect CardPointe Customers: 
    Make sure values in MC Trade Credit Card Gateways are filled in for:
    - CardPointe Merchant ID 
    - CardPointe Username
    - CardPointe Password

You can now create an ARB Record for each member:

  1. Navigate to the profile you want to set up the billing for, click Edit Profile, enter the Billing section, and click Add.
  2. Create the billing item as you do normally, with two changes:
  3. Check the "Set as Automatic Recurring Billing" checkbox.                                                                     

    arb.png

    When setting up Automatic Recurring Billings, the Anchor Day must be at least one day in the future. You cannot set the Anchor Day to be 'today's' date. The Anchor Month, Anchor Day and Starting Year will be the first day that the card/account is charged via your gateway's ARB service. From that day forward, the charge will automatically recur at the frequency in the Billing Cycle dropdown. NOTE: CardPointe supports only Monthly or Every 12 Months cycle, you cannot choose Every 3 Months or Every 6 Months if you are going to set up an ARB with a CardPointe gateway.
     
  4. Select the Payment Type for the recurring payment.
  5. Enter the name, address, and phone number for the person/company who will receive the Automatic Recurring Billing. Note: The address must match the billing address on file with their credit card company or bank.
  6. If you selected a Payment Type of Credit Card, enter the credit card information on the Credit Card Tab. If you selected a Payment Type of ACH, enter the account information on the ACH Tab.
  7. Click Save to save the ARB account info and send the information to your gateway. The gateway will create an ARB subscription in your account using the information provided from MC Trade.

If a billing record already exists on a profile, changing this record to ARB is the same as making a new record, however, if this billing record has already been used in a prior invoice, it is not recommended to alter the start date, as this will alter the record history of the member's billing configuration. Instead, deactivate the current billing and create a new one as the ARB with the new start date.

What happens next?

  1. On the specified date of each cycle, your gateway will charge the card or debit the account automatically.
  2. Each day (early morning hours), MC Trade will run an import to create invoices and payments for all charges that were made in your gateway any time during the previous or current day. 
  3. Any charges made during the day after the initial sync has run will be created the following day, but dated properly for the date the card was actually charged. 
  4. The email in the "Online Bill Pay Notification" field in your settings will receive an email indicating all of the invoices that were successfully created during the import. 

Successful ARB charges will display in Revenue > Credit Card Activity with a red exclamation mark in the "Status" column. In the transaction details, the Transaction Message will display "capturedPendingSettlement", sent from the Credit Card Gateway.

NOTE: If you are experiencing issues with transactions going through in Authorize.net but not being recorded in MC Trade, please click here to ensure that your API Key is up to date and compatible with the ARB integration.

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