Bar Tabs/ Pre Authorization Bug

[Bar901]

Bar Tabs- Preauthorization feedback that needs to be addressed:

I enabled Bar Tabs/ Pre Auth last night at my bar. We are using a $21 preauth amount if that matters. Per my employee from last night "So an update on my thoughts of the pre auth. I don’t think it’s ready for a busy night. It did a “payment failed” twice yesterday when trying to cash out. once with a regular, I had to hit button like 5 times and it finally went through, then again at end of night and no matter how many times I hit the button it would not go through. I had to ask for his card back and process payment normally. That same customer also showed me his phone because he got a fraud alert message. I’m not sure if it’s because I pre authorized his card and then he promptly bought 18 shots of epsilon but it wouldn’t process."

[AndySQ]

Hi @Bar901 Thanks for reaching out to share this experience and let us know!  This sounds like the final total of the bill was more than 50% of the initial pre-auth, which we do expect to cause failures in some cases. 

It's a card-level limitation and may also be why he received a fraud alert on his phone when it was attempted - your intuition is right that it's because they added a lot to their total before settling up.

To make sure I'm looking at the correct transaction - was this a Visa with a final charged total of $200.44 after tip?

In this case, an initial pre-auth of $21 was added, but because the final total exceeded the initial authorization several times over, a new attempt to pay was required in this case.  The decline message could be more explicit here to identify what the best next steps are, which is to ring up the final amount without a pre-auth.

I hope I'm on the right track here and that this context is helpful, but definitely let me know here or via DM if we need to look at any other recent transactions, or if there's more going on with this particular transaction that we should review 👍

Andy