Finance Providers

You can find this section under Payment Processing > Finance Providers in the IRP Admin left navigation menu.

This topic covers the following areas:

• Finance Overview
• IRP Admin Finance Providers Section
• Application Settings for V12 Finance
• Finance Payment from the Customer’s Viewpoint
• Managing Finance Orders Using IRP Admin

You use the Finance Providers section to make a finance option available to your customers as an alternative payment method to Card, PayPal, Offline and WorldPay.

For example, you can set up IRP with V12 Retail Finance as a provider, the UK’s only specialist provider of Retail Point of Sale Credit. If you are a retailer with high-value items, you will benefit from the option to offer your customers the ability to spread the cost of their expensive purchase over time.

To make the most of the IRP Finance Provider feature, follow these steps:

1. Set up your account with your Finance Provider, for example V12 Finance. For details, refer to the V12 Retail Finance website.
2. Add the Finance Provider using the Payment Processing > Finance Providers section in the IRP Admin left navigation menu. For details, see the How to Add or Edit a Finance Provider article in this section.
3. Add the Finance Products to be associated with the Finance Provider using the Payment Processing > Finance Products section in the IRP Admin left navigation menu. This is where you define the options that will be available to customers on your website if they choose to pay by finance. You can set up either interest-bearing or interest-free products, define minimum loan amounts, APR, deposit, duration and so forth. For details, see the Finance Products help topic.
4. Configure the Application Settings for V12 Finance.
5. Exclude any Categories, Brands, Models or Stock from Finance using the 'Exclude From Finance' settings on the CategoriesEdit.aspx, BrandsEdit.aspx, ModelsEdit.aspx and StockEdit.aspx pages. The default is to not exclude finance at the Category and Brand levels; you can change this when necessary and you can also use overrides at the Model and Stock level (which are set by default to inherit the Brand/Category value). For more information, see the help topics for Brands, Categories and Models.
6. When your system is operational, manage the orders that have come through using the finance payment option. See the Managing Finance Orders Using IRP Admin for details.

You will first need to set up your Finance Provider using the Payment Processing > Finance Providers section in the IRP Admin left navigation menu (see the How to Add or Edit a Finance Provider article in this section) for details. When you have done this, the main Finance Providers page shows the Finance Provider details, for example:

The page shows the following details for each provider:

• ID: This is the unique IRP identifier for the finance provider.
• Logo: This is the logo uploaded for the finance provider (if any).
• Provider Name: This is the name of the finance provider.
• Billing Country: This is the billing country in which the finance provider is available.
• Product Count: This is the number of financial products associated with the provider. See the Finance Products help topic for more details.
• Integration Type: This is the type of integration associated with the finance provider, for example, ‘V12’.

There are several Finance Application Settings associated with the V12 feature:

• Allow Different Billing & Delivery Addresses: Check this box to allow customers to set a different Delivery Address to their Billing Address when placing orders using Finance as their selected Payment Method. By default, any Finance orders will be shipped to the customer’s registered Billing Address.
• Authentication Key: This is the Authentication Key provided by V12 for accessing their web service for Finance Applications.
• Retailer GUID: This is the Retailer GUID provided by V12, needed for accessing their web service for Finance Applications.
• Retailer ID: This is the Retailer ID provided by V12, needed for accessing their web service for Finance Applications.

On a model page, customers can see the finance option in a couple of places:

When customers are buying items and adding them to their basket, they can see the offer of finance under the ‘Proceed’ buttons:

If they click the ‘Learn More’ link, they will see details of the offer in a lightbox:

When customers progress to the checkout stage, they will again see the finance options available to them in the Payment Details section. They will see a breakdown of the payments that they will have to make should they choose a particular finance product. For example:

The customer then clicks the Pay By Finance button and checks a summary of their order. When they subsequently click the Place Order button, they will be redirected to an order confirmation page for finance orders — here is a mock-up of the page as an example:

From here, the customer’s browser will redirect them automatically to V12’s hosted application page — provided JavaScript is enabled on their machine. If JavaScript is not enabled, the customer should click the Proceed to Finance Application button.

When the customer in the example above has placed their order, you will see their order on the main Orders page in IRP Admin. For example:

You can see that the order is clearly identified as a Finance order. If you scroll down you can see that you can perform a finance application status check on the order:

If the check deems that the finance application has been completed, the order will be moved to a status of ‘New’ and you can proceed with managing the order in the same way as you do for any other order. If the application has not been successful then the IRP does not allow the dispatch stage to proceed.

Finance orders go in to the IRP as standard orders, meaning that whenever a customer places a finance order, the stock is deprecated immediately from the web stock level. Once the payment is processed, you should process the order just like a standard card order and then the local stock will be deprecated whenever the order is placed in the Picking and Packing status.

Keeping Track of Finance Status Checks

You can view the status of application checks on new pay-by-finance orders on an individual basis, or in bulk, by clicking the Pending Payments button on the Orders page:

Click this button to go the OrdersPendingPayments.aspx page, then click the Finance tab to view all finance orders that have yet to be approved by the Finance Provider. The page appears as follows:

You can see the following details:

• Order ID: This is the IRP Order ID number.
• Customer ID: This is the IRP Customer ID of the customer who made the application.
• Customer: This is the name of the customer who made the application.
• Application Status: There are several sStatuses returned by V12 when performing an Application Status check:
  • Acknowledged: New application. Not yet pushed for credit check.
  • Referred: Referred for manual underwriting. Will progress to Declined or Accepted.
  • Declined: Cannot provide finance.
  • Accepted: Finance has been accepted. Awaiting the customer’s signed legal agreement.
  • Awaiting Fulfilment: Documents are signed. Goods can be dispatched and then you can Request Payment via the Update Application call.
  • Payment Requested: The request for payment has been acknowledged and payment will be processed shortly.
  • Payment Processed: Funds have been sent. Settlement information is available on the V12 website.
  • Cancelled: The application has been cancelled
• Total Price: This is the total price of the items being purchased.
• Items: This is the number of items being purchased.
• Placed: This is the date and time of the application.
• Age: This is the age, in days, of the finance application.

To perform a Finance Application Status check on an order, click the Check Status on Selected Orders button. You will then be presented with the following message: Are you sure you want to perform a Status Check on the Selected Pending Finance Orders? Click OK to proceed.

If at this stage you want to cancel the order, click the Cancel button. When an order is cancelled, the Finance Application is also cancelled seamlessly.

You can also perform some bulk operations using this page. The following operations are available:

• Cancel Incompleted Finance Orders older than: Cancel any incomplete finance orders that are older than the specified number of days. You can run this in accordance with your website’s policy on Finance Applications. Click the Cancel button to proceed.
• Perform Status Check for ALL Incomplete Finance Applications: Perform Application Status Checks on all Orders in the NEW PAY BY FINANCE status. Click the Check button to proceed.

Note that once a Finance Order has been completed, the V12 Status Update page no longer accepts Status Updates and any post-processing will have to be performed manually.

Finance Orders on the IRP EPOS

If you use the IRP EPOS, you will also see the order come through as a finance order:

From here, you can click the Manage Order button to progress with the order on IRP Admin.

For more details refer to the How to Add or Edit a Finance Provider article in this help topic. Also see the Finance Products help topic.