Gift Certificate Process

First of all, this is my first posting out here - thank the lord for this site. I browsed the forums and think that this is going to be a wealth of information for me. Now, on to my question...

Ideally, how should digital gift certificates work for an online retailer? I'm trying to help a client who is experiencing a delay in how their digital gift certificates get delayed. They export their orders from their site the day after orders are submitted. At that time, and using authorize.net, the transaction is completed, then the orders are imported back into their ecommerce platform. Once those orders are imported back in, their status is updated appropriately and a gift certificate is emailed (if the order, in fact, had a gift certificate).

The bottom line is that there is a delay in emailing the digital gift certificate. But if we were to immediately send that gift certificate, my client could be exposing themselves to credit card fraud.

Is something about the whole process (the site, authorize.net, etc.) not setup quick optimally? Thoughts?

Thanks...

I don't understand this part of your process:

"They export their orders from their site the day after orders are submitted. At that time, and using authorize.net, the transaction is completed, then the orders are imported back into their ecommerce platform."

Why are the orders not processed from within the e-commerce platform and gift certificates applied at the time of processing. that's the way mine works.

Let me describe the process a little bit better:

Our client exports orders from our E-Commerce platform everyday. They then import them into their ERP system. Once orders are boxed they import the spreadsheet back into our E-Commerce platform and they are automatically marked shipped and confirmation emails with tracking urls are sent.

The problem lie's with sending out digital gift certificates. Once the customer places and order on the site, their card is marked authorizing/processing with Authorize.net.

Authorize.net never sends a response to our ecommerce platform once the order has completely cleared. So we have no way to automatically send customers who purchased digital gift certificates them. The only way they get them is when we run an order import.