configure correct transaction statuses for regular merchandise

[bobmeetin]

I have Virtuemart 1.1.3 set up and talking politely to authorize.net. I'm just making sure that I have it configured correctly for regular merchandise and that I understand the order process.

I configured "Order Status for successful transactions" to "Pending"

1) Customer places an order, VM sends the transaction info to Authorize.net
2) I lookup the order in authorize.net and under "Trans Status" it says "Captured/Pending Settlement"
3) I check with the warehouse and the merchandise is in stock, so I go back into Virtuemart, update that order to "Confirmed".
4) I lookup the order in authorize.net and under "Trans Status" it still says "Captured/Pending Settlement".
5) The order goes to shipping and is sent so I optionally update status to "Shipped"

I'm confused a tad; in step 1, shouldn't the status in auth.net be something like "authorized" or perhaps "reserved", meaning that the card is authed and funds reserved for the transaction, but it won't be processed or completed until the merchant updates the status in step 3 to Confirmed?

[bobmeetin]

This was solved. The confusion is in that there are 2 functions to configure and it took a phone call to auth.net to understand this.

Under the Configuration tab:

a) "Authentication Type" - probably set to AUTH_ONLY unless downloadable goods.
b) Set "Order Status for successful transactions" to Pending. What this does is to check/authorize that a card has funds and temporarily set those funds in reserve for that order.

For a more complete discussion on this and other Virtuemart Gotchas read my blog post at
http://dottedi.biz/index.php?option=com_wordpress&p=848&Itemid=340