Payments glossary: charge, order, payment, tender, capture, settlement

Card payments carry a vocabulary that mostly goes unnoticed until two screens use the same word for different things. This page defines the six words you meet most often across WeeConnectPay and Clover, in the order they happen, and points at exactly where each one appears on your screens.

The one distinction that explains the rest

Your store's Transaction mode decides which vocabulary your payments use. You set it under WooCommerce → Settings → Payments → WeeConnectPay, where two cards offer Charge at checkout and Order and charge. Pick Charge at checkout and a Hold and charge later switch appears under it, giving you three ways a payment can be taken.

• Charge at checkout and Hold and charge later are direct-charge modes. The cart becomes one charge on Clover, with a short description. There is no Clover order behind it.
• Order and charge builds a Clover order first, line by line, and then that order is paid. The settings page describes it as "Clover receives the full order item by item, then the card is charged."

That is why one WooCommerce order can leave a note reading "Charge ID: " while another leaves "Payment ID: ". They are two different objects on Clover's side, and each mode produces one of them.

Charge

A charge is one card operation against one card, for one amount, in one currency. It is the unit WeeConnectPay works in on direct-charge modes.

Where you meet it. The WeeConnectPay Charges panel on the WooCommerce order edit page lists every charge on that order, each with its own Refund or Void button, its Charge ID, card brand and last four digits, Auth Code and Reference. In your WeeConnectPay dashboard, the Transactions page is a list of charges.

The states a charge can be in, as your dashboard labels them: Succeeded, Captured, Pre-authorized, Declined, Failed, Refunded, Partially refunded, Partially paid. The plugin's own transaction history uses the matching set: Success, Partial Refund, Refunded, Voided, Captured.

Declined and Failed are not the same state. Your dashboard spells the difference out: a declined charge means "The card issuer refused the payment. The customer can retry with another card. No action is needed on your side." A failed charge means "The payment could not be processed for a technical reason, not a card refusal. If this repeats, contact WeeConnectPay support."

Order

An order is the itemized record of what was bought. The word does double duty, and which one is meant depends on the system you are looking at.

• Your WooCommerce order always exists. It is the record in your store, at WooCommerce → Orders, holding the cart, the customer, the totals, the order notes, and the refund controls.
• A Clover order exists only on the Order and charge transaction mode. Each cart line becomes its own line item on Clover, with shipping as its own line. When one is created, the order note reads "Clover order created." followed by "Order ID: ".

In your WeeConnectPay dashboard, a Clover order carries one of these states: Paid, Open, Pending, Failed, Cancelled.

Why the difference is worth knowing. Refunds follow the object. On a Clover order, refunds work on whole line items, which is why a partial amount there produces "Partial refunds are not supported for order-based charges. Only a full refund of the entire charge amount can be processed." On a direct charge there are no line items, so partial amounts of any size work, from the WeeConnectPay Charges panel. The two cases are covered in Refunds on Order and charge and Partial refunds on Direct Charges.

Payment

A payment is what settles a Clover order. Where a charge stands alone, a payment is attached to an order and pays it, in whole or in part.

Where you meet it. On the Order and charge mode, a successful order leaves the note "Clover payment successful!" followed by "Payment ID: ". In your dashboard, the Transactions page has a Payment column, and each row's detail carries Reference #, Auth code, Order, and Transaction ID.

One order can hold more than one payment. That is what happens when a customer pays partly with a gift card or loyalty card and partly with a regular card: two payments exist for one order, and the plugin says so when you try a line-item refund, with "This order contains gift card or loyalty card payments. For security reasons, partial refunds are not available when multiple payment methods are used."

Tender

A tender is the kind of money a payment was taken in: a credit card, a gift card, cash, or a tender your business defined itself on Clover.

Where you meet it. In your dashboard, a transaction's detail shows a Tender field when the payment names one. On the WooCommerce order, a payment taken against a tender your business defined leaves the note "Clover custom tender payment successful!" with a "Custom Tender: " line naming it.

Card payments through WeeConnectPay are card tenders. Custom tenders exist for the money that arrives another way and still needs to land in the same Clover reporting as everything else.

Capture

Capture is the moment held money actually moves. As something you do, it only applies to the Hold and charge later mode, described on the settings page as "Holds the money without taking it. You charge the card yourself later, from the WooCommerce order page."

The word still turns up on Charge at checkout, because taking the money in one step is a capture too: those orders get the note "Clover capture charge successful!" even though you never held anything. A hold you capture yourself later leaves a different note, "Pre-authorized charge successfully captured!"

The sequence is two steps:

1. The hold, or pre-authorization. At checkout, the card is checked and the amount is reserved on the cardholder's card. Nothing has been taken. The order note reads "Clover pre-authorization charge successful!" and the charge state is Pre-authorized.
2. The capture. When you are ready, you capture from the order page. The plugin confirms with "Are you sure you want to capture this charge? This action cannot be undone.", then "Pre-authorized charge successfully captured!" with the "Amount captured: ". The charge state becomes Captured.

You can capture less than you held. If you never capture, you void instead: the plugin explains that "Voiding this pre-authorization will release the held funds back to the cardholder." and names the full amount that will be released.

Two states are easy to mix up. Voided means held money was released and nothing was ever taken. Refunded means money that was taken has been given back.

Settlement

Settlement is the day-end step where Clover closes the batch of the day's transactions and sends them for funding. Clover's own settings call this page Closeout.

Where you meet it. Almost never, until a partial refund lands on the wrong side of it. A captured hold that has not yet been through the day's closeout cannot take a partial refund, and the plugin says exactly that: "This partial refund was declined because the transaction has not been closed out yet. Partial refunds on captured pre-authorizations are only available after the daily batch closeout. You can try a full refund, or retry after the batch has closed."

The refund form warns you before you get there, with "Partial refunds on captured pre-authorizations may only be available after the daily batch has been closed out. If the partial refund is declined, you can try a full refund instead."

So a same-day partial refund on a captured hold has two paths: refund the full amount now, or wait for the batch to close and issue the partial amount afterwards.

Words that travel with these six

Which word applies to your store

If a screen is using one of these words in a way that does not match what you read here, email support@weeconnectpay.com with a screenshot and the order number, and we will tell you exactly which object you are looking at.