We’d like to take a moment to inform Infusionsoft clients about Authorize.Net’s changes with regard to e-mail receipts being sent to your customers.  We’d like to share two solutions and share our thoughts on these changes with you.

What happened?

Clients may notice a substantial increase in customer contacts responding to an e-mail receipt sent by Authorize.Net. These e-mail receipts are delivered by Authorize.Net when an automated recurring payment is collected from the individual customer. These e-mail receipts can potentially be sent any day of the month — whatever the date of their billing cycle.

For most small business owners, this isn’t a big deal, but for a handful, it can cost them hundreds of dollars in recurring revenue if their customers contest their charges and cancel their continuity program. We understand this and have dug deep into empowering small business owners in addressing this change.

Why?

Authorize.Net implemented these changes in an effort to decrease credit card declines, charge backs and the wide scope of negative customer experiences. Looking at it from a customer perspective, these are good steps for the Internet’s largest merchant gateway to take, but we acknowledge the concern as we advocate for small business (and their customers).

What’s the solution?

There are two solutions for Infusionsoft customers. The immediate solution is included below. The intermediate solution will be deployed in Infusionsoft very shortly, where clients can set their preference within their Infusionsoft settings.

The immediate solution involves adjusting two settings in your Authorize.Net Merchant Account. According to their documentation, it looks pretty straightforward:

1. Log into your Authorize.Net Merchant Interface at https://account.authorize.net.
2. Click Settings in the main left side menu.
3. Click Email Receipt.
4. Uncheck the box labeled “Email transaction receipt to customer (if email address is provided).” When selected, an email will be sent to the address submitted with the transaction. Leave this box unselected if you do not want to send email receipts directly to customers.
5. Uncheck the box labeled “Email customer for each successfully authorized ARB generated transaction.” When selected, an e-mail will be sent to the address configured for the Automated Recurring Billing™ ARB subscription at the successful authorization of each recurring transaction. Leave this box unselected if you do not want to send email receipts for subscription-based transactions directly to end customers.
6. Click the Submit button. A confirmation message indicates that your setting has been successfully applied.

We’ll let you know when we update Infusionsoft with the option to set these settings from within our software. We’re working on it right now with über-high priority. Briefly, it will be an on/off switch that you may toggle.

We hope you found this information valuable so you can continue to grow your business profitably and quickly. Please let us know if you have any questions on concerns in the comments.

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