"Payment by installments" and "Instant installment" services: making a payment and accounting for bank fees

The ability to sell goods in installments is critically important for retail, because it directly affects conversion and the average receipt amount. 

The services «Payment by Installments» (where the bank commission is paid by the seller) and «Instant Installment» (where the interest is mostly paid by the buyer) allow customers to buy expensive goods immediately by splitting the payment over several months. However, for business owners, this used to create a serious accounting problem for a long time: how to fiscalize such a sale so that it does not mix with regular card payments? How to avoid cash gaps and manual calculation of large bank commissions charged for «Payment by Installments» (since the commission percentage changes dynamically depending on the number of payments)? In addition, cashiers often got confused by issuing a fiscal receipt for the full amount when the terminal was not configured for the relevant service, which led to reporting errors and shortages.

To solve these problems, Torgsoft (starting from version 2022.2.0) implemented a full integration algorithm with bank terminals for automatic processing of such payments and accurate accounting of the bank commission.

Technical requirements and conditions of use

To accept installment payments through the program, several conditions must be met:

• Program version. Torgsoft must be updated to version 2022.2.0 or higher.

• Additional option. The paid option «Integration with a bank terminal» must be activated.

• Equipment. Currently, the functionality fully works with PrivatBank bank terminals that use B-POS or JSON (WebSocket) data exchange protocols. 

Step-by-step setup in Torgsoft

So that the cashier can select the installment type during payment, the owner or administrator needs to correctly configure the bank and commission directories once.

Step 1. Activating services in the «Bank» directory

1. Go to the menu Settings → Bank.

2. Open your bank card for editing (for example, PrivatBank).

3. Find the group of switches «Available services». Here you need to check the boxes next to «Instant Installment» and/or «Payment by Installments».

4. If you activate «Payment by Installments», the «Service commission» button next to it will become active.

Step 2. Setting up the dynamic bank commission

Since the store pays for the «Payment by Installments» service, the program must know the bank rates in order to automatically write off the correct amount as an expense.

1. Click the «Service commission» button.

2. In the window that appears, fill in the rate table: click «Add» and specify the Number of payments (it cannot be less than 2) and the corresponding Commission percentage.

3. Current rates should be checked in advance on the bank’s official website or in your acquiring agreement.

Step 3. Setting up the terminal merchant

After setting up the bank, you need to «explain» to the terminal that it can accept such payments.

1. Go to Settings → Parameters → Additional options → Bank terminal.

2. Open your terminal settings and add a new merchant.

3. Select the current account linked to the bank with the configured services.

4. Enable the «Use service» checkbox and select the required option from the drop-down list: «Payment by Installments» or «Instant Installment».

5. Set the operation type as «Payment».

6. Protocol nuance: if the terminal works via the B-POS protocol, you must specify the exact sequence number of the merchant (you can find it using the «Get terminal information» button or from the bank’s support). For the JSON protocol, specifying the merchant number is not required.

Processing a sale at the cash register (Sale)

When all settings are completed, the sales process becomes as automated as possible for the cashier:

1. The cashier adds the product to the «Sale» window and clicks «Pay».

2. Selects Cashless payment, specifies the required current account, and clicks «Pay» (or «Enter payment»).

3. The «Bank terminal merchants» window appears on the screen, where the cashier selects the prepared merchant (for example, «Payment by Installments»).

4. The program immediately asks for the number of payments into which the customer wants to split the amount.  Important: the number of payments cannot exceed the maximum value you previously specified in the commission matrix.

5. Torgsoft sends the command to the POS terminal. The customer taps the card.

6. After the transaction is approved by the bank, a fiscal receipt is printed, and the slip receipt contains all mandatory acquiring information.

How automatic financial and commission accounting works

The greatest value of this update is the full automation of the accountant’s and owner’s work. When a transaction through «Payment by Installments» is successful, Torgsoft independently performs the following actions:

1. Credits the full sale amount to the selected current account as payment for the product.

2. Automatically creates an outgoing financial document (expense) under the analysis item «Payment by Installments service commission».

3. The amount of this commission is calculated accurately based on the percentage linked to the selected number of payments.

4. This expense is recorded under the same counterparty (bank) as regular acquiring. In the comment to the financial document, the program records the commission percentage, total payment amount, and number of payments.

5. To identify such payments, the program automatically adds the marker «_ОЧ» (Payment by Installments) or «_МР» (Instant Installment) to the transaction number in the financial document.