Support Tip of the Month – Settle Your Account Every Day

Did you know there is one final step to send your daily transactions to our bank for processing after the original point of sale transaction? This final step is called “batching out” or “settling,” and is necessary in order to transmit your daily sales to the bank for deposit. Until that point, all of the transactions are stored in a “batch” in your point of sale system (e.g. terminal, gateway, or software). The settlement sends the batch to our bank so they can process the transactions and deposit the funds to your bank account (usually on a 2-business day timeline for Visa/MC/Discover). We strongly urge you to batch-out or settle your transactions daily. If you do not send the transactions to the bank within a certain amount of time (usually a week), the original authorizations may expire and the card would need to be re-run.

One of our merchants recently discovered the importance of batching when they neglected to batch out their terminals after a one-time event. This merchant lost all of their sales, totaling over $10,000! You can avoid this by making sure to be aware of your batch times and monitor your funding on a regular basis to avoid this type of scenario.

The good news is that most equipment can be set to automatically settle, in which case you don’t have to worry about manually doing it yourself. If you are processing online or through a gateway, the majority of gateways are set to automatically settle, and you can easily update the time of settlement. For example, if you process with Authorize.net, the default settlement time (a.k.a. Transaction Cutoff Time) is set at 3pm PST.

If you process with a stand-alone terminal, it may automatically settle or you may need to do it manually, depending on how the account was set up. We try to make sure to work with you during the initial setup to ensure the terminal is configured properly for settlement. If you choose to auto-settle, we’ll set it at a certain time every day. If you choose to manually settle, it is your responsibility to batch out the terminal at the end of every business day. If you have any questions about your settlement time or if you are not receiving your funding within 2 business days of processing, please contact Dharma and we will assist you in getting everything set up correctly.