E-Cart in house order processing, integration with CIM - authorize.net
Hello All,
I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere on my cart, but as soon as I start to make progress, a plethora of new questions and problems arise.
What I WANT to happen:
1) Customer enters in shipping and payment details at my website when they goto checkout.
2) SOMETHING occurs... (e-cart works it magic, I believe a payment gateway is necessary to validate the card (although I could do that in-house- see below) and securely transmit the info)
3) I am sent a secure email, or login to a website, or, somehow retrieve the information so I can process this at our cc machine in-house after confirming shipping, inventory etc. I do not need to STORE the information, just process the cc details and destroy it like we do when people call in on the phone.
The number 2 part is where I started to run into difficulty. It was recommended that I 100% needed a gateway to securely pass the information to us somehow. I wish ecart could just do this somehow. Ray, can you confirm that this is not possible and that I need the gateway?
So I purchased the gateway at authorize.net but next they inform that they cannot send me the information to process after confirmation order details. For that, I need to pay about double the price for CIM (Customer Information Manager). This way, at step number 2, the customers information will be sent and stored to authorize.net where I can look it up to process from our store (or they may make me process at their store, I'm not fully sure yet). So they sent me a link on how to implement this; CIM_XML_guide.pdf This all looks a bit daunting and over my head. I'm not sure how e-cart can integrate with this, or if it already will somehow. I'm very new to PHP etc. so mostly just patching this together as best I can with a somewhat limited amount of time.
Can anyone offer any advice here on how to proceed? Keep on the track with this CIM and try to integrate it into the e-cart somehow? If so, where do I begin with that??
Is there another path that might be better? It seems like I am after a fairly simple process here.... but the solution I am working towards seems not so elegant.
Your thoughts appreciated greatly.
Ernesto
