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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Posts
    1,378

    Credit Card Machine Question

    Okay, I love this place because I can ask questions in here that aren't at all related to my usual hosting ones, and still get good answers. I'm hoping you won't disappoint me.

    A while back at work, I was doing a credit card transaction (on a 'conventional' credit card machine), and the display said "Settle Now." My boss showed me that I just hit 9 for Settle, and got a receipt, which I put in the drawer. She wasn't around today when it happened again, so I did the same. After the receipt, though, it came up with a bunch of fields that were on the receipt, for things like "Sales," "Tips," etc. (I'm not positive what the fields were.)

    Anyway, in my infinite wisdom, I just hit Enter at each, then finally realized that probably wasn't right, and hit Cancel. It seemed to have worked fine; I was able to do the credit card without a problem. But what I want to know is... What exactly does the Settle thing do, and what exactly did I do? I'm worried that hitting Enter sent off 0 for each of the fields (even though the receipt it printed first had values for them), or that Cancel cleared the whole thing. The receipt was for about $1,500, so I'm really praying I didn't mess anything up too horribly.

    Can anyone help me?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Albany, New York
    Posts
    3,026
    you hit ENTER 9, then 0, then ENTER

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2003
    Location
    Pasadena, CA
    Posts
    76
    Settle sends the entire batch to the processor. In other words, it clears the transactions in the machine and eventually puts the money in your bank account.

    In order to answer your question about what you did, you'll have to gve me the type of machine. Sounds old to me. Is it a TRANZ380 or TRANZ330? Or is it a newer one, like a Hypercom?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Posts
    1,378
    Originally posted by Carp
    you hit ENTER 9, then 0, then ENTER
    0 for... the quantity at the prompts?

    And Greg: I'm not sure on the machine type, but I don't think it's anything too new. Based on a quick Google image search, it looks like one of the Tranz-type ones; I want to say it's the 330, but I'm really not sure.

    So messing up the settle... could have done away with all the money? But what confuses me is that it first printed the receipt with the amounts, before giving me a prompt with something looking like each line on it. Was I supposed to enter the amounts? (But that would be stupid, since it already printed the amounts.)

    And maybe hitting Cancel at the end was a bad idea? What would that do? Delete the transactions?

    And I thought it did transactions 'online' -- it takes what seems like an eternity to connect to authorize and all; it doesn't send the money off?

    My boss was already kind of ticked today; I sooooo hope I didn't mess this up.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Dec 2003
    Location
    Pasadena, CA
    Posts
    76
    Originally posted by fog
    0 for... the quantity at the prompts?

    And Greg: I'm not sure on the machine type, but I don't think it's anything too new. Based on a quick Google image search, it looks like one of the Tranz-type ones; I want to say it's the 330, but I'm really not sure.

    So messing up the settle... could have done away with all the money? But what confuses me is that it first printed the receipt with the amounts, before giving me a prompt with something looking like each line on it. Was I supposed to enter the amounts? (But that would be stupid, since it already printed the amounts.)

    And maybe hitting Cancel at the end was a bad idea? What would that do? Delete the transactions?

    And I thought it did transactions 'online' -- it takes what seems like an eternity to connect to authorize and all; it doesn't send the money off?

    My boss was already kind of ticked today; I sooooo hope I didn't mess this up.
    No you didn't mess anything up. What's already been swiped will stay in the machine unless you manually void every transaction, which you didn't do.

    And, no, there's no way to mess with the amounts that are already in the batch. You can only add charges, by adding tips (which you didn't do). Pressing cancel doesn't do anything bad. It simply cancels whatever you were currently doing. Since you already settled (batched-out), there should not have been any transactions in the machine to mess with.

    To answer your last question, this is how it works: when a credit card is swiped through, the machine simply remembers the card information and amount charged. It doesn't go to your bank account yet. Then you must "batch-out" or go to settle your machine's transactions. This sends all the transactions in the machine's memory to a clearing-house called the processor (usually it's First Data Corporation, the biggest monopoly in the world). Then your bank account receives the funds a few days later.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Posts
    1,378
    Originally posted by greg1024
    [B]No you didn't mess anything up.
    I can sleep tonight! lol, I was really worried about that.

    It still strikes me as if it'd make more sense to do everything through one place -- when I run a credit card, it'd go right to First Data, rather than calling one place, being verified, then later sending it off to another.

    Maybe I should start my own CC processing service that does that, and that has nice easy-to-use machines.

    Thanks a bunch for your help. And how the heck do you know so much about this?

  7. #7
    Originally posted by fog
    It still strikes me as if it'd make more sense to do everything through one place -- when I run a credit card, it'd go right to First Data, rather than calling one place, being verified, then later sending it off to another.
    That delay prevents alot of fraud!
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