Processing a Refund
An attendee can no longer attend the conference. How do I process their refund?
The system is not allowing me to process a refund?
Is there a charge for doing a refund?
Note: If you get the message that a duplicate transaction cannot be processed it is because of a safety feature build into the merchant account that prevents identical transactions from being processed within five minutes of each other. So if you have to issue two or more refunds of the same amount to the same credit card, you will need to wait five to ten minutes between each transaction.
Go to "Basic Attendee Listing" and find the person for whom you wish to process the refund. In the second column, "Action," use the dropdown and select "Refund." The refund link will only appear if the person has a balance available to be refunded and you have money permissions. This will open up a new window that will be made up of four sections.
Attendee Payments: The registration type and current paid balance will be listed in this section. Additionally, a second line will be provided for you to enter a cancellation penalty (see below). In this section you simply provide the amount for each of these items you wish to refund.
Additional Items: If used, this section will provide a total of additional items that you have purchased. You enter the quantity of each item you wish to refund. You cannot change the amount of the item you wish to refund, just the quanity.
Housing: Allows you to obtain a refund for all or part of your housing (Note, as of December 12th, housing is not yet finished so this section is inactive.) If your event is set up so that the housing is included in the registration fee, you will need to first cancel their housing before issuing the refund.
Refund Method: You are only able to process one refund type at a time and this section is where you make that choice. If you have an invoice with multiple payment choices you will need to refund one at a time.
The Refund Method is a drop down that first lists the available options based credit cards, fund transfers, staff accounts, chartfields and scholarships. If multiple types were used (i.e. two different credit cards), the last four digits of the credit card will be displayed along with the maximum available balance for that type.
Following these specific types, there will always be a listing for "Check", "Cash" and "Other" and the upper limit for this type is based on the total amount to be refunded. This then provides and option for being able to issue a "check" refund for an original credit card entry. This is helpful in those cases where you are unable to process a credit card because the transaction is too old. When you select the "check" or "other" option, you will fill out some additional details. For "cash" you fill out what the cash source. This provides a tracking method for where the cash came from.
A Cancellation Fee
Before processing a refund you will need to decide about assessing a cancellation penalty. It is not required and it should be determined already by event policy, but whatever you decide, the automated script will help you assess the fee. Although you may be tempted to not assess a cancellation fee, keep in mind that you were already charged a fee by the credit card company. So on a $200 payment, you may already be out $5 to $10. Additionally, most merchant accounts will also charge the same fee for a refund, so you now have an additional $5 to $10. On top of that there is employee time and other considerations. Most attendees expect a cancellation fee provided that it is spelled out in advance and is reasonable.
Assessing a Cancellation Penalty: The assessment of a cancellation penalty is done as a normal step in the refund process. You simply enter the amount of the cancellation penalty. If you want to do a refund/cancellation penalty combination that will bring a balance down to zero, you simply assess your cancelation penalty first and leave the remaining balance in the registration type field. So for example, if John Toast was registered and had paid $50 of $200 and you now assess a $25 cancellation fee, you would be issuing a refund for $25.
Charge for Doing a Refund: For self processed refunds there is no charge or service fee. If you used the EventCORE credit card, you will pay the standard service fee on both the original charge and on the refund (which you even pay on self managed credit cards... they get you both ways).
Issuing a Refund: To actually issue the refund you simply fill out all of the appropriate fields in the Attendee Refunds window and hit "Process Refund." The script will then continue with processing and adjust the tables accordingly. The cancellation penalty will be kept in your account as income to the event. Any amount in the refund field will be refunded to the attendee.
Continuing with our previous example, if you then refunded the remaining $25, the balance would now show paid $0 of $200. At this time, with a zero balance you could now cancel this individual.
In addition to "Process Refund" there is another option called "Issue Credit." This creates a "holding" credit entry that can then be transferred to another attendee or will be held as a credit for future use.
Assessing a Full Cancellation Fee: If an attendee cannot attend and is due no refund, you may wish to change their registration to "cancelled" so as to not throw off your count. You can simply put their entire paid amount as a cancellation penalty which will bring their balance down to zero. You can then cancel the attendee.
THIS ANSWER IS INCOMPLETE! Once housing is finished, you'll need to add that section as well.
This script also needs to be set up with javascript to automate the cancellation processs.