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Does Elliott Support Credit Card Pre-Authorization Transactions?

← Credit Card Processing
Release Date: 07/17/2020
Version: 8.0 & up

Q - We are doing more and more credit card charges lately, which is also increasing the amount of adjustments that need to be made to order totals. Do you have a way to "pre-charge" a card for a number of days but do the actual charge later for a totaled order amount?

For example, we have an order for $100 that gets charged on Monday for a shipment on Wednesday. As we load the shipment on Wednesday, we have to short ship the order by $20 due to inadequate inventory. We go into Elliott and modify the order total to be $80. Does an easy way exist to update the credit card to only charge the $80?

A - The short answer is “YES.”

In Elliott Credit Card Processing, we support the following transaction types:
  • Sales
  • Refund
  • Void
  • PreAuth
  • Complete
  • Force
You have been using “S=Sales” transaction in the past.  The "Pre-Charge"  transaction you refer to is called “Pre-Auth.” To perform Pre-Authorization, in whatever credit card processing screen where it prompts you for “Trx Type,” you will choose “P=PreAuth.” See sample screen below:


This is like charging a credit card, but it just allocates the amount of that credit card. You will get an approval number back. The transaction does not create any accounting record in Elliott Business Software. But it will create a record in Credit Card Log History for future reference.

When you are about to charge the final amount to this credit card, where the system prompts you for the credit card number, you can use the “F8” key. See sample screen below:


The credit card log history will then be displayed:


Select the corresponding Pre-Authorized transaction, and the transaction type will default to “C=Complete.”  Accept it.  Then you can change the credit card amount if it turns out to be  different.  Please see also see the following KB article for more details:

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