Delayed Charge or Delayed Initial Payment in the Checkout

Currently the option to delay a charge in the checkout or the initial payment is only available if you use the following Payment Service Providers: 

• Stripe
• Braintree

Here’s when you might want to delay a charge:

• Limited stock availability - If you are unsure whether you can fulfil the order or not because you don’t have the necessary stock amount and need to order the stock from your supplier first. 
• Validating the credit worthiness of the customer - If you want to check the credit score of the customer first and based on the credit score decide whether you actually want to fulfil the order or not. 
• Checking if delivery is possible - If you want to check first whether you can actually deliver your product to the requested area & you need to manually follow up with the customer for the delivery of the product. 

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Here’s what happens if you delay the charge in the checkout:

• When you delay the charge in the checkout, the order amount only gets reserved on your consumers' bank account and it is checked if the payment is verified. 
• The order will be created in your shop system + circuly, but the payment status will be set to payment required and you can only start a subscription as soon as you have charged the initial payment.

Alternatively you can enable the Allow unpaid subscription setting that allows you to create a subscription for unpaid orders. When you use the Allow unpaid subscription setting, you no longer need to charge the initial payment manually as it will be automatically triggered by the circuly system when you create a subscription for an order.

To enable the Unpaid subscription setting > Go to Settings > Subscription > CREATE SUBSCRIPTION > Enable the switch for Allow unpaid subscriptions.

• The customer will receive the Order confirmation email. Make sure you communicate clearly is the Order confirmation email that this email is only for the confirmation that the order request has been received and is not a confirmation for the order acceptance itself. Make sure to align your communication in this email template.
• In the Order Overview a new action will appear under the three dots menu options called “charge initial payment”.

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Here’s how you can set up delaying the charge of the initial payment in the checkout: 

Only applicable if you use Stripe and Braintree as Payment Service 

Note: Please make sure you have the resource capacity to charge the initial payment manually once you want to confirm the order. Then do the following: 

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• Go to Settings > Checkout > END CHECKOUT > Enable the switch for Delay charge in checkout.

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• Change the Default payment status to “payment required”. 
• Navigate to the Email Templates tab and adapt the Order Confirmation email. Make sure you communicate that this is only a confirmation email for order request and not order confirmation. 
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• Optional: adapt the content of your Order fulfilment completed email or your Subscription Activated email. You may want to do this if you officially want to confirm the order to your customer. You can do this either when you are sending out the product to the customer (in the order fulfilment email) or with the subscription activation. Inform your customer that you can confirm the order, that the money has been therefore charged and that the product is delivered or is under delivery.

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Note: The change applies to all orders only after you have activated the associated setting.

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Here’s how you can charge the initial payment:

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•  When the Delay charge in checkout setting is enabled, in your Order overview Window under the menu options, you will find a new menu option “charge initial payment”. 
• Go to the menu option and and charge the initial payment. 
• Once the initial payment has been successfully charged from your customers’ account, the Payment was successful email will be automatically sent to the customer. 
• The payment status will then change to paid. 
• Continue with your planned fulfilment / subscription process. 

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Note: You can only Create a subscription once the initial payment has been processed. The button/option to so will now we be available to you or you've enabled the Allow unpaid subscription setting.

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