About Transaction Fees

Transaction fees are fees that are assessed by a payment processor when a transaction is processed through its gateway.

The fee reduces the amount deposited into the merchants bank account after the transaction settles. For this reason it's important to track fees, as it is required in the calculation of net income.

Recording Fees

1. From the Gateway

Some gateways, such as PayPal, provide instant feedback on the fee assessed after a payment is processed. As such, payment gateways in Blesta SHOULD allow returning the fee amount in conjunction with the processed amount.

2. From the Transactions Model

Some gateways have a fixed fee amount. Blesta SHOULD support configuring the fee amount per gateway per currency, then use this to calculate the fee when recording the transaction (in the event that the gateway does not return the fee).

A new company settings section must be added to maintain these fees. It should appear something like:

3. When Recording a Payment

When a staff user records a manual payment, they SHOULD see an input field for the fee amount to set for the transaction. If left blank and the user selected a gateway, then the fee calculation should be made using the fee schedule defined in the company settings.

NOTE

This IS NOT an accurate representation of fees taken by a gateway prior to deposit because most gateways take fees for various reasons that Blesta can not determine:

• Mid qualified, qualified, and non-qualified transactions all have different rates
• Currency exchange rates
• Foreign cards vs domestic cards
• AmericanExpress, Visa/MasterCard, Discover all have different rates

THEREFORE A true and accurate fee calculation can not be established in many cases until the payment has been reconciled and deposited.