How Recurring Donations Work

The Recurring Donations feature uses the ARB (Automated Recurring Billing) functionality of Authorize.NET. You must login and change your settings through Authorize.net to allow ARB. 

To modify or cancel a recurring donation, you must login to your Authorize.NET and use their interface. 

Recurring Donations in SAM are established by external users through Public Forms that have the Recurring Donation option enabled.

When a donation form is submitted online, SAM will create an initial Donation record with the following values: 

• Project / Cause
• Donation Amount - Recurring = Amount of recurring
• Recurring Donation Frequency
• Donation Amount is empty

Donation records are created at the frequency specified, with  Donation Amount and Project/Cause pulled from the initial Donation record until the schedule is cancelled or expired. These donation records will have Created from Recurring Donation = Yes.

SAM checks the status of a Recurring Donation schedule to ensure that the Donation Amount has been processed prior to inserting the Donation records.

Setup Recurring Donations for Public Forms 

1. Open the form in Form Customizer 

2. Under Advanced Options > Really Advanced Options > click Edit Payment Configuration

3. The Form Payment Configuration page allows you to select Payment Amount Type = 

1. ARB Only
2. Hybrid
3. Hybrid (Payment Amount-n-Type Select) option allows the donor to select from a radio-button list of different donation amounts, where some of the donation options are for recurring and some are for a one time payment.

4. For the "ARB Only" option, you only have to select the whether the user enters the Donation Amount into a field or its preset for the form, and the Frequency.

Payment configuration has a lot of settings, we recommend working with our support team to configure. 

Authorize.NET Transactions

When a recurring donation is submitted, SAM first submits a request to Authorize.NET to verify that the card can be charged for the requested amount (but not actually charged yet), which will be shown as a voided transaction in your Authorize.NET portal. 

The actual transaction/charges happen in the middle of nights through Authorize.NET's automated services. SAM talks with Authorize.NET nightly to confirm which ARB Subscriptions are still active and if so, creates Donation records for them.