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Published 01/14/2002

Chapter 1

Overview of the New Reporting System

This chapter describes CyberSource's new reporting system and explains how it differs from the current reporting system.

Overview

Like the current reporting system, CyberSource's new reporting system offers configurable reports that give you information about your CyberSource transactions. However, the new system provides summary reports that help you manage your business, and the new system makes it easier to reconcile your CyberSource reports with your processor and bank statements.

The new reporting system, as well as additional documentation of the system, will be available in January 2002.

Important  You must migrate to the new reporting system by March 20, 2002. However, you will still be able to view existing reports from the current system until July 15, 2002.

Types of Reports

The new reporting system provides two types of reports:

• Summary reports, accessed with a Web browser
• Detail reports, accessed with a Web browser or other client application

Important  The new reporting system does not email reports to you.

Summary Reports

Summary reports provide high-level information about your transactions, such as the number of payments you have processed successfully and the distribution of Advanced Fraud Screen scores. You can use these reports to manage your business.

Some summary reports are available to all CyberSource ICS2 customers for no additional charge. These reports are described in Chapter 2, "Migrating to the New Reporting System". There may be an additional charge for other summary reports. These reports are described in Chapter 3, "New Reporting System Features".

You can access all of the summary reports on the test version of the new reporting Web site. Use the test site to decide which summary reports you need.

When you start using the production version of the new reporting Web site, you will be able to see which summary reports you can access. If you want to use additional summary reports, contact CyberSource Customer Support for information.

Detail Reports

Detail reports are similar to the reports that you currently receive by email. These reports include specific information about each transaction you request. You can use these reports to reconcile processor and bank statements, create your own custom reports, and design a customized analysis of your business activity.

You can access detail reports on the reporting Web site. You can also implement a client application that downloads detail reports automatically.

For information about implementing a client application for the new reporting system, see the CyberSource Reporting Developer's Guide, available on the CyberSource Support Center. This guide also documents the file formats for detail reports.

Report Formats

The new reporting system offers several different report formats. Each report is available in at least two different formats.

Summary Reports

Summary reports are available in the following formats:

• Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language (DHTML)

You can view these reports with one of the following Web browsers:

• Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4.0 or greater
• Netscape® Navigator 6.2 or greater
• Portable Document Format (PDF)

You can view these reports with Adobe® Acrobat® Reader®.

• Comma-separated values (CSV)

These reports are similar to the current reporting system's pipe-delimited or tab-delimited reports. You can import CSV files into a spreadsheet.

For Digital Delivery Services reports, you can download a CSV file for each report. For other summary reports, you can search a report, then download your search results as a CSV file.

Detail Reports

Detail reports are available in the following formats:

• Extensible Markup Language (XML)

You can use XML-compliant tools to process these reports.

• Comma-separated values (CSV)

These reports are similar to the current reporting system's pipe-delimited or tab-delimited reports. You can import CSV files into a spreadsheet.

Note  For the Transaction Detail Report, the CSV version does not include offer-level fields, such as the stock-keeping unit (SKU) for an item.

The file formats of these reports are documented in the CyberSource Reporting Developer's Guide, available on the CyberSource Support Center.

Report Configuration

When you start using the new reporting system, you can choose which reports you want to subscribe to. You can also choose whether to receive your detail reports in XML or CSV format. After you configure the system, it generates your reports automatically.

The new reporting system generates only the reports that you request. It will not generate reports for old transactions. For example, if you request a transaction on January 31, then configure a new report for yourself on February 1, you cannot create a report that shows the transaction from January 31.

Some of your report settings will be copied from the current reporting system. See Chapter 2, "Migrating to the New Reporting System" for more information.

More information about configuring your reports will be available in January 2002.

Feature Comparison

The following table provides a comparison between the current reporting system and the new reporting system.

Table 1 Reporting Feature Comparison 

Current Reporting System	New Reporting System
Reports are emailed to you and can be viewed on the Web	Reports can be downloaded securely or viewed on the Web
Pipe-delimited or tab-delimited reports	XML and comma-separated values (CSV) reports
HTML reports	DHTML and PDF reports
One summary report	Many summary reports
Reports show transactions for a single merchant ID	Many reports can show transactions for all of your merchant IDs
All reports use Pacific time	Many reports allow you to choose which time zone to use
Cannot choose a date format	Date format for summary reports is configurable
No test server	Test server