ChargeOn Terminology¶
ChargeOn uses a few words in a specific way. This page defines them, so that the rest of the documentation can use them without stopping to explain.
Start with payment types and payment modes to choose what the customer pays with and when you charge them.
Payment types and payment modes
Choose a Payment Type for what the customer pays with. On the Charge screen, choose a payment mode for when and how often you charge them: Instant Payment, Schedule Payment, Installment Plan or Subscription.
Payment Types and Payment Modes¶
Payment Type: what the customer pays with.
| Type | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Card | Credit and debit cards |
| Bank | Direct bank debits, including ACH and e-cheque in the United States, and SEPA in the eurozone |
| Payment Link | A page the customer pays on themselves, rather than you taking the details |
Cash, cheque and wire transfer are also payment types, used when recording a payment that happened outside ChargeOn. See Offline payment.
Payment modes: when and how often you charge. You choose from 4 modes on the Charge screen.
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Instant Payment | Charges immediately |
| Schedule Payment | Charges once, on a future date you set |
| Installment Plan | Charges on a schedule with Bill until set to N payments, Total reached or End date |
| Subscription | Charges on a schedule with Ends set to Never or On date |
One place uses a longer list
A gateway's Supported Payment Modes field lists Instant, Schedule, Installment and Subscription, corresponding to the 4 modes above. It also offers Direct Debit, which is not a tile on the Charge screen.
A to Z¶
3D Secure: an extra identity check on a card payment, run by the card issuer before the payment is approved. The customer typically confirms with a one-time code. It reduces fraud and can shift liability for disputed transactions.
ACH: the bank transfer network used in the United States. One of the forms a Bank payment takes.
Advance payment: money collected before there is an invoice to put it against. ChargeOn records it as a credit memo, which is then available to settle an invoice when one is raised.
Apply advance credit
Apply the credit to the invoice you choose. To apply it automatically to an installment plan’s or subscription’s future cycle invoices, enable Auto Apply on Recurring for that credit memo. This setting is off by default. Payment links are raised for the full amount, with credit applied separately.
Authorisation hold: reserving money on a card without taking it. The funds are held by the card issuer while you confirm you can deliver. You then either capture the payment or void the hold. For bank payments, charge the customer.
Automated collection: a set of rules that chase overdue payments for you: reminder emails, fresh payment links, and optional retries against a saved payment method. Configured by pointing and clicking, with no code.
BECS: the bank transfer network used in Australia. You will see this word on screen instead of "Bank Payment" when a bank payment is in Australian dollars. It is not a separate payment type to choose; it is what ChargeOn calls a bank payment in that currency.
Capture: taking money that was previously reserved by an authorisation hold. The opposite of void.
Credit memo: a credit issued to a customer that can be applied against an invoice or a future balance, without money moving. Used for overpayments, goodwill and adjustments. Voiding an unapplied credit memo cancels its available balance.
Gateway fallback: automatically retrying a declined payment on a backup gateway, so a single gateway problem does not cost you the sale.
Set up card payment fallback
Choose eligible primary and backup gateways for card payments using the gateway reference. Confirm any extra setup with your implementation team.
An installment plan or subscription whose first charge succeeds on a backup gateway stays on that gateway for the rest of its life.
Guest user: the anonymous identity Salesforce uses for someone visiting a public page without logging in. Your customers pay through a payment link as a guest user, which is why its permissions have to be set up carefully and kept narrow.
Headless 360: ChargeOn's surface for external AI tools, letting them work with payments without anyone opening Salesforce. Every payment still needs a person to confirm it explicitly.
Instant Payment: a charge taken immediately, in real time, from a Salesforce record.
Invoice: a bill raised before payment is taken, tracked through statuses: Due, Paid, Partially Paid, Overdue, Processing, Authorized, Void and Closed.
Late fee: a charge added automatically to an invoice that passes its due date, subject to any grace period you configure.
Level 2 card data: extra detail such as tax amount, purchase order number and customer code, sent with a business card transaction. Card networks charge lower fees for transactions carrying it, so it can reduce processing costs on corporate cards.
MCP: the open standard that lets AI tools connect to systems in a consistent way. It is the mechanism behind Headless 360.
Net terms: the window a customer has to pay an invoice, such as Net 30, and the rules that apply when they miss it.
Offline payment: a payment that happened outside ChargeOn (cash, a cheque, a wire transfer), recorded in Salesforce so that your revenue picture is complete. You can attach a receipt as proof.
Payment gateway: the service that actually moves the money between the customer's bank or card and yours. ChargeOn connects 20 of them, and you can run several at once.
Payment link: a secure page, with its own web address and QR code, where a customer pays without you handling their card. Payment links work with Instant Payment, Schedule Payment, Installment Plan and Subscription.
Payment object: the Salesforce record a payment is taken against. It can be a standard object such as Opportunity, or any custom object you use to track work worth billing.
Payment orchestration: managing payments across several gateways at once rather than being tied to one: routing each transaction to the right gateway, retrying elsewhere on failure, and reporting on all of it in one place.
PCI-DSS: the security standard governing how card data is handled. How much of it applies to your organisation depends on how your gateways are configured. Ask whoever implemented ChargeOn which of your gateways keep card numbers out of your Salesforce org.
Reconciliation: comparing what ChargeOn recorded against what the gateway actually processed, and flagging anything matched, unmatched or mismatched, so the books can be closed with confidence.
Recurring Payment: the name of the Salesforce record created when you set up an Installment Plan or a Subscription. These are separate modes on the Charge screen and they behave differently, so this guide names the mode rather than the record wherever it can.
An Installment Plan charges on a schedule. Under Bill until, choose how it ends:
| Bill until | How it ends |
|---|---|
| N payments | After the Number of Payments you enter, from 2 to 600 |
| Total reached | When the total in Payable Amount has been collected |
| End date | On the End Date you enter |
For Total reached, enter the Per-Installment Amount; the total comes from Payable Amount. Choose how often to charge under Frequency.
A Subscription charges on a schedule you choose under Bills Every. Under Ends, choose Never to bill indefinitely, or On date and enter Subscription Ends On to bill until that date.
Both modes offer 6 frequencies: weekly, fortnightly (labelled Biweekly on screen), monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and yearly.
Refund: returning money from a completed payment, in full or in part. It creates its own linked transaction record, so the original payment and its refund are both visible.
Register token: saving a customer's payment details securely for later use, without charging them now.
Remote site: a Salesforce setting that authorises your org to contact an external web address. You add one for each payment gateway you connect; without it, Salesforce blocks the connection.
Salesforce-native: built and run entirely inside Salesforce. No separate application, no second login, and no payment data leaving your Salesforce environment. Different from a product that merely connects to Salesforce from outside.
Salesforce Site: a public web page hosted by Salesforce that visitors reach without logging in. ChargeOn serves payment links from one.
Schedule Payment: a single charge set to run on a future date. It runs once. You can change the date, or cancel it, any time before it runs.
SEPA: the bank transfer scheme used across the eurozone. One of the forms a Bank payment takes.
Surcharge: a fee added to a card payment to recover processing costs. Shown to the customer before they confirm. It can be applied to credit cards only, with exceptions set globally, per gateway, or per customer.
Tokenisation: replacing card details with a meaningless substitute value, so the real number is never stored in Salesforce. The token can be charged again later, but is useless to anyone who obtains it.
Transaction history: the record of every payment attempt, successful or not, with its amount, status, gateway, type and timestamp. The single place to look for what happened.
Unresolved transaction: a stored payment attempt awaiting review. An administrator checks its Gateway Status, then uses Resolve to complete the transaction record.
Verify credentials: the button that checks whether the details you entered for a gateway actually work.
Confirm NMI with a test payment
Use test credentials to take a test payment, then check its result in Transaction History and your NMI dashboard.
Void: releasing an authorisation hold without taking the money. The opposite of capture. Once voided, the reserved funds are freed and no payment is taken.