When a member pays for a store order with an eCheck and their bank returns it, CSAware finds out on its own and does the bookkeeping half of the cleanup for you. The other half — deciding what happens to the subscription and the box credits — is yours, and it waits for you on the order's Chargeback page.
This covers eCheck payments on regular store orders: CSA sign-ups, renewals, add-ons and one-off store purchases. Wholesale purchase orders are handled separately.
What happens automatically
CSAware polls Authorize.net twice a day (just after midnight and just after noon, server time) for every eCheck order placed in the last four weeks. Authorize.net reports a return as soon as the member's bank sends one, which is usually two to seven business days after the payment settled.
When a return comes in, CSAware immediately:
- marks the order Bounced eCheck and stamps it with the return date
- records the bank's return code and reason in the order log — for example
No account/unable to locate account (R03) - debits the member's cash account for the bounced amount, so the balance they owe you shows up right away
- debits your Returned Check Fee as well, if you have one set
What CSAware does not do is touch the member's subscription or their box credits. Those deliveries stay scheduled until you decide what should happen to them. That is deliberate: a bounce is often a stale account number rather than an unwilling payer, and only you know which member is which.
Where to find bounced orders
There is no email and no dashboard alert for a bounce, so it is worth making this a habit if you accept eChecks.
Go to Orders, then choose Bounced eCheck from the Order Status menu on the left. That list only appears for stores that have eCheck payments turned on.
Open the order. You will see the return code and reason in the order history, and the button bar at the bottom will offer Chargeback where a normal order would offer Refund.
The Chargeback page
The page shows you the member's contact details, the order totals, and two figures that matter:
- Debited from Cash Account at bounce — what CSAware already took out of the member's cash account when the return came in. You do not need to do this again.
- Cash-account portion to refund — only appears if part of the order was paid from the member's cash account rather than by eCheck. That money was real and did not bounce, so processing the chargeback puts it back.
Below that is one row per product on the order, with a Remove Credit checkbox and a count of credits to remove. Both are pre-filled with the credits from this order that the member has not used yet. If they have already used some, the count is reduced and a note tells you how many are left. A question-mark icon means there are none left to take back.
There is also a cancel subscriptions checkbox. Ticking it cancels the share and add-on subscriptions bought on this order, and it locks every Remove Credit box on so all remaining credits come back out too.
Click Process Chargeback when you are done. Processing:
- closes the order out as charged back and moves it to Refunded, so it leaves the Bounced eCheck list
- puts the cash-account portion back, if there was one
- carries out whatever you ticked: cancels subscriptions, removes credits, reverses a membership fee, cancels delivery fees, cancels any undelivered one-off items
No money changes hands at this step and the member is not charged a second time. The cash-account debit from the day of the bounce is the amount they owe you; the chargeback just closes the order and unwinds the product.
The Order Memos box at the bottom of the page is for notes to yourself and your admins. Add Memo saves the note without processing anything, so you can come back to the order later.
Choosing what to do
The member is making good on it. Process the chargeback with every Remove Credit box unticked and cancel subscriptions off. The order closes, the credits stay in the subscription, and deliveries keep running. Then collect the cash-account balance however you normally would — the member can pay it down from their Member Dashboard, or you can post a card or check payment to their cash account.
You want the product back. Tick cancel subscriptions (or untick it and remove credits line by line if you only want to pull back some of them), then process. The credits come out, the subscriptions cancel, and the boxes stop. The cash-account balance stays owed to you.
Either way the member's cash account still shows what they owe, including your returned check fee. Nothing in CSAware stops that member from choosing eCheck again on their next order, so if the return was anything other than a typo, decide whether you still want to accept it from them and say so to the member directly — CSAware does not email them about a bounce or a chargeback.
Your Returned Check Fee
Set it under Home / Settings / Option Settings, in the eCheck Payments block, as Returned Check Fee. It is charged to the member's cash account automatically each time one of their eChecks is returned. Leave it at zero if you would rather absorb the bank's fee.
Reading the return code
The order log carries the NACHA return code the member's bank sent, along with its plain-English reason. The ones you will see most often:
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| R01 | Insufficient funds |
| R02 | Account closed |
| R03 | No account / unable to locate account |
| R04 | Invalid account number |
| R06 | Account closed per the bank's request |
| R07 | Authorization revoked by the account holder |
| R08 | Payment stopped |
| R09 | Uncollected funds |
| R10 | Not authorized — the account holder does not recognise the debit |
| R16 | Account frozen |
| R20 | Non-transaction account |
| R29 | Corporate customer advises not authorized |
R03 and R04 usually mean the member mistyped their routing or account number, and are worth a phone call before you cancel anything. R07, R08, R10 and R29 mean the member asked their bank to refuse the debit — treat those as a dispute and get in touch before the next delivery.
Related: an eCheck that expired instead
If an eCheck never settles at all, Authorize.net eventually reports it as expired rather than returned. CSAware logs eCheck Expired on the order and, if the order was still unconfirmed, cancels it. A confirmed order keeps its status and the amount is debited to the member's cash account, but it does not move to the Bounced eCheck list and does not get a Chargeback button. Use the order's Refund button if you need to close it out, and contact us if the credits need unwinding — that combination is rare enough that it is worth a second pair of eyes.