All credit card payments taken online must be processed using a secure method.

With the Gravity Forms Nelnet AddOn WordPress Plugin, Site Editors may follow the step-by-step instructions to create basic payment forms using WordPress Gravity Forms and a Nelnet Order Type from the BU Cashier’s Office.

For more complex payment forms that cannot be built with Gravity Forms, IS&T can build a payment form using our Marconi form processor. We can create a form that takes client and pricing information and sends it to the Cashier’s System, which handles the credit transactions in a completely secure environment.

Before You Begin

  1. Follow the steps provided by the University Cashier to start processing credit card payments.
  2. Create your Marconi form using the field names specified in the sample credit card form. This will ensure that the Cashier’s System receives the information necessary for the transaction.
  3. Follow the instructions below after setting up your Marconi configuration file.

Process Credit Cards Online

  1. Add this line of code to your Marconi configuration file:
    <directive special="nelnet" amount="amount-to-be-charged" order_type="your-nelnet-order-type"/>
  2. Replace amount-to-be-charged with the amount (in dollars) to be charged, your-nelnet-order-type with the Nelnet Order Type Code you received from the University Cashier.  Note that you can use conditional variables or form fields to have different amounts charged:
    • Example #1 – Single Sum
      • <directive special="nelnet" order_type="AB123" amount="50.00" />
    • Example #2 – Sum Specified by a Form Field
      • <directive special="nelnet" order_type="AB123" amount=[total-charge]"/>
    • Example #3 – Sum Specified by a Conditional Directive
      In this example, if the value of the field location is on-campus, then a different price will be substituted for whatever [total-charge] normally is.

      • <directive special="nelnet" order_type="AB123" amount=[total-charge]"/>
        <directive action="conditional-field" source_field="location" source_value="on-campus" target_field="total-charge" target_value="100.00" />
  3. Contact the Cashier’s Office to test your form while still using the Test branch of Marconi. Once the Cashier’s Office gives its approval, we can push the configuration and related files to production branch of Marconi and update the form action:
    • Form action set for Test environment of Marconi and Nelnet
      • <form action=”https://www-test.bu.edu/phpbin/marconi/”>
    • After approval by the Cashier’s Office in Test, the Marconi configuration file and email templates should be pushed to Production and the HTML form action set for Production environment of Marconi and Nelnet
      • <form action=”https://wwwt.bu.edu/phpbin/marconi/”>

Process Credit Card Orders Taken over the Phone

The order_type parameter tells Nelnet whether it is a public or office payment and other settings and one form may now submit to more than one order_type using the [if?:] special variable. In the example below if the field named “email” has the value “dept_email@bu.edu”, “OF321” will be the order-type value and, otherwise, “AB123” would be order-type.

Example:
<directive special="nelnet" amount="50.00" order_type="[if?:email=dept_email@bu.edu:OF321:AB123]"/>

Examples of Complete Files