We are currently researching merchant accounts for NetCommunity, and are seeking opinions of NetCommunity clients that use or have used Authorize.net. 

In June we implemented NetCommunity and decided to use Authorize.net over IATS due to the cost savings on the credit card fees.  So far no issues.

Just wondering if any of you have further feedback on Authorize.net 

We've been with them for four months now - and while the cost may be less - the functionality is lacking, at least for me.  Transactions that I could do seamlessly between IATS and RE or NetCommunity now involve extra work on my part.  I'm not convinced that the cost savings is worth my extra time. 

Hi Candace,

Could you describe what issues you might experience with Authorize.Net? We wanted to add Authorize.Net as our additional processor back in the summer of 2009, but decided to wait hoping that Blackbaud and IATS would change their fee structure.

I don't know if this is an issue with Authorize.net - or just the credit card industry in general.  But - since we switched from our former vendor (Skipjack) to Authorize in October - we are now getting a high number of declined transactions on credit cards that are valid.  This rarely happened with Skipjack.  Now, every month we have 20 - 30 of these types of declines.  Parents and donors have had to call their bank and insist that the charges from us are legitimate in order for us to process. 

Mark -

My biggest area of concern has to do with the lack of integration with RE - which then creates more data entry work. 

For one - when processing credit card transactions that come in through the mail.  With IATS I can create a batch in Raiser's Edge and upload the credit card transactions directly from the batch.  With Authorize.net I either have to charge the cards individually through our NetCommunity donation form or an authorize.net virtual terminal.  But if it's more than three cards, I create a query of the constituents who will have a credit card charge.  The output becomes the base of a text file I use for uploading the charges to Authorize.net.  I then use the same query to group load the constituents into a gift batch, and recreate the transactions in Raiser's Edge.  If the charges were for tuition payments,  I use the upload file to create an import into Student Billing. 

Through NetCommunity you can offer constituents the option of creating a pledge transaction  - but only if IATS is your processor.  With authorize - I'm not able to retrieve the credit card information from the Blackbaud Payment Service.  We have 150 families that who want us to charge their tuition automatically for them each month.  I was hoping to be able to set up a NetCommunity payment page where the parents could sign up for this themselves by entering their tuition amount and selecting one of two dates for having the charge created.  Unfortunately, I'm going to have to secure credit card numbers and authorizations from these families, key the information in to a text file and create a recurring batch within authorize.net. 

Same thing for donors who want to contribute monthly to the Annual Fund.

A couple of other issues - Reports from Authorize.net are not as easy to manage or robust as reports from IATS or other vendors I've used. The most glaring reporting issue for me is that I can't get a daily summary of all the transactions within a date range.  In order to reconcile my database entries with actual charges processed, I have to download the data into Excel and create my own report with subtotals. 

I don't know if this is an issue with Authorize.net - or just the credit card industry in general.  But - since we switched from our former vendor (Skipjack) to Authorize in October - we are now getting a high number of declined transactions on credit cards that are valid.  This rarely happened with Skipjack.  Now, every month we have 20 - 30 of these types of declines.  Parents and donors have had to call their bank and insist that the charges from us are legitimate in order for us to process.