e-Commerce / Credit Card questions

[rodneyphillips]

I have a couple questions re: e-Commerce and acceptance of credit cards. I have been creating web sites for a number of years but never an e-Commerce site.

I have a client with a small retail business who wants to start selling some items on-line. She wants to be able to accept credit cards on-line but does not want the card charged immedately. Shipping might not occur for a couple of days so she wants to be able to control when the card is charged. Also, the site will not reflect an inventory so if she is out of any item she wants to be able to ship items in stop and thus reduce the amount charged to the customer's card.

Questions:
Are there shopping carts that allow the merchant to partially "fullfill" an order and have the invoice reflect this (and possibly a backorder status)?

Do shopping carts (and maybe it is a function of the selected payment gateway) provide a way to delay charging a customer's credit card until the order is actually shipped (which would be indicated by the merchant)?

Thanks

[stevel]

It sounds to me as if you want the cart to simply collect the credit card info and the merchant submits charges as required separately from the customer placing the order. I assume she already has a merchant account, so that makes a lot of sense.

I'm sure there are ways in many shopping carts to reflect back-ordered or partial-ship status. I haven't looked at this myself.