It is possible to migrate from other payment systems to Chargent providing you can export the data from the old system. If you have experience with data migration you should be able to load the data into Salesforce.
Note: Chargent recommends migrating tokens if you are using tokenization. If you are not using tokenization, please keep in mind that Chargent doesn’t store the CVC (Credit Card Verification Code). If your gateway requires the CVC you may need to obtain the tokens before migrating.
When migrating billing records from another system, always test with small batches (~10) before moving into full production.
For manual charge usage of Chargent, the migration is straightforward and requires only Amount and payment information be transferred to Salesforce.
Recurring Billing requires a bit more care so that there is no interruption in billing or duplicate charges. There are several fields that need to be populated in order to ensure charges occur on the date they are supposed to.
- Payment Start Date – This is extremely important. Make sure this is the date of the next transaction otherwise it could be picked up in the batch and processed sooner than expected. This field also updates and automatically populates the Next Transaction Date field.
- Payment Status – This needs to be set to Recurring in order to be processed in the batch.
- Frequency – This will tell the batch how frequently the transactions should be processed (Annually, Monthly, Weekly).
- Token – If you are using tokenization, you should be able to run a report at your gateway, and import this data into the Token field.
Again, always test with a small number of records, prior to migrating and setting all records up to be billed.
Chargent uses past Transactions and their Gateway Date to calculate the next date a transaction should be processed. We recommend loading data into “Transactions” and making sure you set these fields:
- Gateway Date=Date and Time of transaction
- Response Status=Approved
- Type=Charge
- Amount=the amount
- Recurring=True (if applicable)
In data migration you should not turn off the old system until you have properly tested the migration. In many cases, running the old and new systems in parallel for some time is recommended. As soon as you get a successful batch of transactions that are part of Chargent’s recurring schedule, you should be good to go from then forward.
AppFrontier® has a number of partners who are experts in data migration and payment systems who we can refer you to for assistance if needed.