First, there is a online accounts receivable program that a client of mine located.  I'm unable to locate that link at the moment and need to write to him.  He talked about integrating that to PC.  Perhaps it would similarly be of interest to you.

 

Then there is this: http://www.gotomyaccounts.com/

 

One of our clients had those folks build an integration for them.  Orders are synched from PC to QBP, and all changes made to QBP are pushed dynamically to this tool.  Payments made by customers via the web portal are then pushed back down to QBP.  My client is very pleased with the outcome, at least as of the last time we discussed it.

My specific scenario is probably a little unique because we do not request customers commit to their order at the time of checkout.  We sell Corporate Christmas Cards and a customer only needs to pay for their order upon approving their proof (which follows after placing their order).  They would therefore be reluctant to enter any credit card details which could result in a charge on their card if their is a likelihood that they will not go through with the order.

From a wider perspective however, and from previous business experience I think it is common for account customers of small businesses to mix up their payment habits.  For instance, if I had an account customer who placed 3 orders in November which were due to be paid at the end of this month, I may discover that they want to pay for 2 by Check and pay the remaing order on their credit card if money was short over Xmas.  It is this flexibility to pay for a payment pending order by a payment gateway that would be useful (rather than take their payment over the phone or force them down the Google Checkout or Paypal route)

 

I can also see it useful for vendors who want flexibility in adding additional costs (eg for unknown shipping costs) after an order has been placed.  The store owner could change the order in the back end and this amount would be shown as a payable amount in the shopper's account.  This would then keep all associated costs with an order under the same order number rather than creating a new one for supplementary costs.

 

If this functionality was considered there may be further scope to think about a practical way of handling staged payments which I know has been encountered a number of times on these forums.  I think this too is closely related.

 

The most common scenario has already been mentioned by Lucy Zoe however and I have plenty of experience of this in the past too.  We used to offer Payment Over the Phone and Payment by Check as an option but found that having placed their order out of office hours the customer wanted to subsequently pay online to speed up the processing of their order.

 

Thanks

Matt

 

 

 

It would be great if account customers who would like to pay for orders online themselves could login and update orders that have the status "payment pending" by making an online payment through the available payment gateway.