Monitor Prepayment
When you switch a marketplace order to prepayment because you do not know the customer, merchantCENTRAL watches for the payment: if none has come in after a week, the customer receives a friendly payment reminder with a deadline. Once the deadline has passed, the dashboard offers the order for cancellation.
Setup
- Mark the payment terms: on the Payment Terms page, select Monitor Prepayment for every payment terms code that counts as prepayment (e.g. VORKASSE). The payment method - such as bank transfer - stays as it is. With the first one, merchantCENTRAL creates the job queue entry merchantCENTRAL: remind customers of open prepayments (hourly between 7 am and 8 pm).
- Deadlines in the merchantCENTRAL setup:
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Prepayment Reminder After (Days) | Days without payment until the reminder, counted from the switch to prepayment. Empty = 7. |
| Prepayment Cancellation After (Days) | Days after the reminder until the order is offered for cancellation. The reminder names this deadline. Empty = 7. |
- Text of the reminder on the Customer Mail Templates page, mail type Prepayment Reminder
(see Cancel an Order). Besides the placeholders
listed there, the reminder knows
{Amount}(amount due),{PaymentDeadline}(deadline) and{IBAN}(IBAN from the company information).
How it works
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Switch | When you set the payment terms code of the sales order to monitored prepayment terms, merchantCENTRAL fills in Prepayment Since. An order that arrives from the shop on prepayment is monitored from its import. |
| Reminder | After the configured number of days, the job queue sends the payment reminder - once, from Business Central or from the shop (setting Customer Mails From). Prepayment Reminder Sent records the day. |
| Deadline passed | The dashboard shows Prepayment deadline passed - cancel order under Waiting for you. Open the order and choose Cancel Marketplace Order; the reason No payment received is preselected. |
Nothing is ever cancelled automatically - the last step is always taken by a person.
When monitoring ends
- You choose Register Payment Received on the sales order.
- The payment terms are changed to ones that are not monitored.
- The order is released or something of it is shipped - an order in progress is never reminded or offered for cancellation, even if the payment was not registered.
- The shop reports the order as paid - the payment status the payment mapping names in Paid When Status.
- The order is cancelled.
Dashboard
| Line | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Prepayment deadline passed - cancel order | Orders whose deadline after the reminder has passed. |
| Prepayment reminders not sent yet | Due reminders that have not gone out (yet) - normal shortly before the next run; if the line stays, sending failed (no email address, no email account). The activity log names the reason. |
Shopware 6
The payment method follows: when you change the payment terms of a shop order, the connector changes the payment method of the order in Shopware - the customer account and the Shopware administration then show Prepayment. Which Shopware payment method fits, it reads from the payment mapping (shop payment type -> payment terms). The change runs through the connector's work queue, sends no email from Shopware and is skipped when the payment is no longer open in the shop.
With Customer Mails From set to Sales Channel, merchantCENTRAL sets the payment status in Shopware to Reminded; the reminder is sent by the flow Payment status: Reminded. Shopify sends no payment reminder - there it always comes from Business Central.