At this time, the only way to do automated recurring donations with CiviCRM is through Paypal.This means that to do recurring donations via Authorize.net, you have to take some extra steps. These extra steps only have to be done once per donation - not ever month.
Tip: You have to set up the extra fields asking if this is a recurring donation, how many times it should be charged, etc. and add it to the contribution form. We're working on the ability to be able to use the fields that are created by CiviCRM but do not show up because recurring transactions aren't supported for anything other than Paypal.
After a person makes a donation, you should receive a copy of their receipt. Inside that receipt, it should tell you whether it is a recurring donation, and if so, for how many months.
For instance, the receipt we have set up has a section that says this:
=========================================================== Recurring donations =========================================================== Is this donation a monthly donation? : No How many months do you want your donation processed? :
Review this receipt to see if this is a recurring donation or not.
Tip: You may want to set up a separate donation form just for recurring donations, as then the header for that email receipt will differ from the non-recurring ones.
Log into Authorize.net.
Click on Unsettled Transactions.
This will give you a listing of items that have come through and not finalized yet. Click on the transaction that needs to be set up to be recurring. (Note: Some fields have been blacked out for privacy reasons.)
On the next page you'll see the details of that transaction.
(click image to see full view of the entire page)
On this page, you will click "Create ARB Subscription from Transaction" to create the recurring transaction.
On the next page, you'll put in how often, when to stop the recurring transaction, etc. You should not have to touch the information regarding the credit card number since it is already stored in the system.
Submit the page.
You've now made that donation into a recurring transaction.
