How can I get a batch id for a transaction and is there really no phone support?

[mcastrigno]

I am a paypal/verisign user that is evaluating this service. I want to use AIM.

I called the customer support number but was told there is no support for developers, versign and paypal have very knowledgeable phone support but there service does not have the feature I am after.

I use php, i have found the sample code

http://developer.authorize.net/downloads/samplecode/

that does the cURL request and this all well and good, easy to understand.

I am reading the document:

http://www.authorize.net/support/AIM_guide.pdf

None of the transaction responses in this document show the return of the batch id.

Can anyone tell me how and if I can obtain batch id for a transaction with something as straight forward as the cURL call in the sample code?

thank you in advance for your response

[RaynorC1emen7]

There in no batch ID until the transaction is settled at the time you set on the merchant account.

There is the Transaction Detail API where you can get the Batch ID from the transactionID, but you will still have to wait for it to be settled first.

[mcastrigno]

Yes I understand that the transaction has to settle before a batch ID is assigned.

I did find the API you linked but my question was specifically to get the information with a simple cURL request as in the sample code i referenced - ie is there a resonse that has this information if you provide the orginal transaction id

[RaynorC1emen7]

You might like getBatchIDwithTransactionID(transactionID) ? nope. the closest one is getTransactionDetailsRequest which return a lot of other info. May I ask why is the BatchID so important?

[mcastrigno]

The batch id is required in order to reconcile the deposits into my merchant bank account.

Each batch which consists of many transactions is lumped as one deposit. By finding the batch id for each transaction I can create a split deposit to be imported to quickbooks. Each split in the deposit has important information from the comment field (verisign term, this service has another name for it) that is required for further processing in Quickbooks. This effectively ties the deposit to the sale of the item and the customer.

When the bank statement comes the deposits match exactly and reconciliation is a very easy process.

If every individual sale resulted in a individual deposit of equal value into my bank account this would not be necessary.

I am ok with any function that provides addtional information I can always strip it out and get what I need.

Are there details on the function getTransactionDetailsRequest works/is used? is it in the .php library that the SDK requires to be included?

Adding here: I see this is method(?) for the API you referenced. I don't use(know how to)  classes and methods. ie the object oriented features of PHP. writing the website is really a side job. it is on my to-do list to learn these things but it only happens when everything about running a real bricks and mortar business is taken care of.

[RaynorC1emen7]

Wouldn't it be easier to get the batchID for like yesterday using the Transaction Details API GetSettledBatchList, then using that BatchID to get all the TransactionIDs with GetTransactionList, then with each TransactionID get their detail with GetTransactionDetails?

It either webservice or xml for the Transaction Detail API.

Use the SDKs to get you started. There is a README file. They are using the XML way on the SDKs

And in the zip there are test code \anet_php_sdk\tests where you can see how it work. For Transaction Detail is the AuthorizeNetTD_Test.php

And it might help you understand what they are doing if you look at the source anet_php_sdk\lib\AuthorizeNetTD.php and anet_php_sdk\lib\shared\AuthorizeNetXMLResponse.php

[mcastrigno]

All way over complicated to get a simple piece of information.

I guess I will just have to wait until verisign adds the functionality of getting a batch id and use their actual phone tech support.