There two classifications of billing transaction, revenue-related transactions and payment-related transactions. These transaction types are merchant-initiated transactions.
Revenue-related Transactions
These are the types of transactions that represent an increase or decrease of the customer’s debt that imposes payment obligations on a customer. These do not imply the physical movement of money from the customer's account to merchant account and vise versa.
Invoice - Transaction that represents the customer's outstanding balance to be paid by the customer for a purchased product or service.
Credit - Transaction that represents the decrease in customer's debt in case of cancellation of purchase, applied discounts and others.
Payment-related Transactions
These are the types of transactions that represent payment collected from/or returned to a customer.
Claim - An attempt by the billing system to collect a recurring payment against the outstanding balance on a specific due date. Claims are processed in the batch files. The result of the claim transaction is generated within 3 days upon submission.
Payment - Transfer funds from the customer to the merchant that covers debts represented by invoices. The result of a payment transaction is generated in real time and is final.
Refund - Transaction that represents an actual return of money to a customer that covers the debt of a merchant represented by credit. Example: A refund is made if it was decided to return the amount of the negative balance to a customer rather than apply it to other invoices due for payment.
Note: Claims are generated automatically within the recurring billing process, while Payments can be created and processed manually via UI or API.
Reverse Action
In case you need to cancel a transaction that has been either created or processed, use the reverse action. Note that the transaction cannot be returned to its initial state after reversal.
Here is the list of the transaction types that can be reversed, as well as their final states.
Revenue-related Reversal
INVOICE → Reverse → CREDIT
CREDIT → Reverse → CANCEL CREDIT
Payment-related Reversal
PAYMENT → Reverse → VOID/REFUND
REFUND → Reverse → CANCEL REFUND
CLAIM → Reverse → REFUND
Bank/processor-initiated Transactions
These transactions are retrieved from a processor and imported into the system automatically.
Return - represents a direct debit payment that has not been honored by a bank.
Chargeback - represents a reversal of prior outbound transfer of funds from a customer's payment card to a merchant.
Chargeback Reversal - represents a reversal of a payment card chargeback.
Ex. Money is given back to the merchant or customer.