by Jim Grenier
For the sake of full transparency I need to own up to making an error with the payment processing for reservations and donations. Due to a communication error I originally entered and incorrect bank account number (off by 1 digit) and the payments several classmates made literally went nowhere. This affected only Tom Small and myself.
When our intrepid treasurer Carol (Larson) Soucy messaged me that no payments were showing up I thought it was simply a waiting period inherent with the software I was using. It said that the first payments may not be processed for 7-14 days! So, I said, “Let’s wait.” But that wasn’t the problem at all. After the 7 days were up I decided I needed to dig deeper and discovered the account number error and promptly fixed it and reset all the other checkboxes, radio buttons and code items that needed to be redone.
Then we waited another few days and still the transactions weren’t processing. Now what?
Turns out one of the checkboxes I clicked was actually stopping the process. Every transaction was waiting for me to approve it. Ironic, because I did not want to have to intervene with anyone’s payment; the less I had to deal with, the better. So, after another couple of hours on my slow clunky computer I finally got all the orders processing.
But wait, there is more…
Turns out that even now our ecommerce system requires that I, as site administrator, need to change each order status from “processing” to “completed” in order for your payment to reach our bank account. I set up the same software for a website a year ago and the transactions were automatic. That is software upgrade for you: just when something is working fine an engineer needs to make it “better.”
So, again, my apologies if you were wondering why your transactions weren’t showing up on your end. Blame me.
I think I’ve got it all fixed now. I sure hope so.