NESFA^® Treasury Procedures: Entering E-Commerce Transactions

(Other than PayPal)

Each batch of E-commerce transactions processed together is treated as a separate batch in the sense of check deposits and charge deposits.  Before March 2003, and perhaps for a while thereafter, the name of the batch was ecomnnn, where nnn was the number at the top of the printed form.

Now we are using a deposit ID similar to that of check deposits.  Use the procedure described in Choosing a deposit number and use the letter suffix E.  So an ecommerce deposit on Labor Day 2013 would be given the ID D130902E. 

Reconciling these deposits is tricky since the processing company lumps deposits that arrive on the same day (by their definition—it's not a calendar day)  together before sending them to our bank, and the Treasurer must carefully figure out which transaction is in which batch and which day.  We have not yet discovered how to tell unambiguously.  Credit card payments processed manually using the Orbital Gateway will show up in the deposit for ecommerce transactions processed the same day.

The discount for the ecommerce batches via the Chase Orbital gateway are assessed at the end of the money in the same way as those for the credit card batches.  Because the ecommerce deposits are processed by the Paymentech gateway in the same way as the payment card deposits, you can use this procedure to check them.

Remember that American Express transactions result in their own batch separate from the MasterCard, Visa, and Discover transactions. You should use a deposit ID number ending in A for the Amex batch.  For the deposit ID mentioned above, the corresponding number for the associated American Express batch would be D130902A.  It may be necessary to label the Amex deposit backup paperwork with a new sequential ID number, and annotate it with the ID number of the main ecommerce batch.  The fees for all the Amex batches for the month will become available in the on-line statement from Amex available through the Amex website.  Details on using the Amex website are confidential and, hence, not documented here. 

PayPal transactions are technically ecommerce as well, and are processed by the ecommerce clerk at the same time as the above transactions.  The procedure of handling them is here.

This page is maintained by Treasurer at NESFA dot org.