Sending an Autopay Batch

This page is intended as a reminder. If you are preparing to process automatic payments for the first time, please call Trash Flow at 1-800-708-8642 for training.

Tip: To get a list of E.F.T. customers whose credit cards will expire before they are next billed, click System > Business Date and set the date to the next day you will assess charges. Click Reports > Customer Reports > Customer List. Check Autopay Customers Only?, use one of the Select Customers fields to “Expired Credit Cards,” and click OK. Once the report is run, be sure to set your business date back to the correct date.

This topic explains how to charge your customers who have signed up for automatic payments.

Before You Begin

You must have one of the billing modules of Trash Flow; you must have signed the Trash Billing agreement; you must have completed the verification and approval process; and you must have at least some customers who are signed up for automatic payments. Before sending an autopay batch, make sure that your customers’ balances reflect the amount of money you want to draw from their accounts.

Context

Charging customers who have signed up for automatic payments is easy, but from your end it's not quite automatic: someone in your office has to follow the steps below. It's easy and takes only a couple of minutes. Please understand that when you send an autopay batch you are not immediately drawing money from your customers’ accounts—you are sending a set of instructions to Trash Flow to charge a list of customers for their entire balance using the payment information you have on file for them.

Steps to follow

  1. Click Auto-Pay Batches > Send Batch.
  2. Select the Date that you want the charges to be made; this will default to the current business date in Trash Flow. (Please note that business day for TrashBilling.com ends at 2 pm Eastern Time.)
  3. Choose whether to send an autopay batch for a specific Bill Group or all bill groups.
  4. Set a Minimum Balance, if desired; customers who owe less than this amount will not be charged.
  5. If you’re sure all options are set correctly, click OK to send the batch.

When You're Done

When the batch is sent Trash Flow immediately enters each payment on the customer account, bringing their balance to zero. Note that the payment has not yet actually processed—we assume you are going to get that money unless something goes wrong. If a payment declines it will be recorded when you pick up web payments. In those cases you will see two transactions on the customer account: the original payment from the autopay batch followed by the decline a day or two later. If desired you can select the batch in the Trash Billing window and in the menu above click Autopay Batches > Batch Info.

  • If the batch is still processing: The batch info will show when the batch was sent, the date it will process, the date the bank deposit will be made, the gross amount of payments, and the estimated net deposit to your bank.
  • If the batch has already processed: The batch info will show when the batch was sent, the date it was processed, the date the bank deposit was made, the gross amount of payments, and the estimated net deposit to your bank. Note that we do not make a separate deposit for the autopay batch—that day's deposit will also include any web payments, direct payments, returns, etc.

Other useful information

  • Please keep in mind that once you start processing a significant number of payments through Trash Billing, some small percentage of each batch will usually come back as declined due to expired credit cards, insufficient funds, compromised or canceled card numbers, etc. If any payments in the batch are later returned or declined you will be notified when you pick up web payments.
  • There is one extra consideration if you use Trash Flow's Access Control with Login by Business enabled: you will need to choose which Business you are sending the batch for. Users without permissions for certain businesses will not be able to see any batches or web payments for those customers.
  • For a master account any sub-accounts that should be on autopay need to have the desired payment method saved on each account.
  • If you receive a message about expired credit cards you can click Auto-Pay Batches > Expired Credit Cards Report. That report is available until you send another autopay batch. Please note that this report shows only the expired credit cards that Trash Flow attempted to process during this batch—if you were sending an autopay batch for your monthly customers, for instance, this report will not show expired credit cards for your quarterly customers.
  • The customers' payment methods are accessed when the batch is created . Any changes made afterward, including changed card numbers, bank accounts, extra payments, etc. done after the batch is created will be ignored when the batch is processed.
  • One reason to enter a minimum balance when sending the batch: it can save in processing fees. For example: a $1.00 credit card transaction could be as much as $0.37 in processing fees and a $0.05 transaction could be as much as $0.35