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Author Topic: Advice On Recording Refunded Contributions  (Read 1137 times)

mkpinformation

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Advice On Recording Refunded Contributions
September 17, 2013, 03:51:45 pm
What is the best way to deal with refunded contributions?  They're rare but they do happen and our accounting guys need to have a line entry for the money on the way in and then on the way back out.

If I simply delete the contribution I don't have a corresponding record of the event in CiviCRM.

How do grownups handle this?
Keith Jarvis
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Coleman Watts

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Re: Advice On Recording Refunded Contributions
September 17, 2013, 04:25:01 pm
Traditionally Civi doesn't do a great job with this, and the most common solution is to just change the contribution status to Cancelled. This works ok but doesn't give the full picture (refund date, refund amt, refund reason, etc).
The new civiAccounts features in 4.3 may offer a better solution, I'm not sure though.
Try asking your question on the new CiviCRM help site.

Eileen

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Re: Advice On Recording Refunded Contributions
September 17, 2013, 04:56:35 pm
We have at least one customer who enters negative contributions.

Since they use pledges they get me to link them to the pledges they relate to (ie. it doesn't happen often enough to be worth a code solution)
Make today the day you step up to support CiviCRM and all the amazing organisations that are using it to improve our world - http://civicrm.org/contribute

joanne

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Re: Advice On Recording Refunded Contributions
September 17, 2013, 10:05:49 pm
We refund directly through our payment gateway or eftpos terminal and then enter negative contributions.  Our refunds are mostly for memberships with double processing of online payments (this issue is being addressed) or event cancellations.

We don't link them to the membership/event they relate to, I just make sure the source line contains enough information eg refund - renewal double pocessed online. 

We operate with several accounting codes and judicious use of Contibution types and price field labels combined with extended report extension  provides all the infomation our bookkeeper and our auditors require.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2013, 10:20:56 pm by jchester »

mkpinformation

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Re: Advice On Recording Refunded Contributions
September 18, 2013, 02:52:17 pm
Grateful for the feedback!!
Keith Jarvis
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zorgalina

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Re: Advice On Recording Refunded Contributions
September 23, 2013, 08:30:09 pm
JChester, regarding refunds for events, are you saying you process a credit or whatnot directly to your payment processor? Is there no way in CiviEvent/CiviContribute to process a refund that will be directly linked to the 'contributor'/user and event that the payment was for?  For payment the model seems to be that the Event can 'have a ' price set; and the user/registrant can select a price and pay for an event; but one cannot link a refund directly to the payment made?   And, if you don't mind, who then is the 'contributor' or whatever for your 'negative' contribution (refund)?
Can you do something like find and edit the Event Registration record, change the Financial Type to, say, 'refund' from 'event fee', put in a negative total amount, or does that just write over and destroy the original registration?

flug

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Re: Advice On Recording Refunded Contributions
October 02, 2013, 06:43:04 am
Quote from: mkpinformation on September 17, 2013, 03:51:45 pm
What is the best way to deal with refunded contributions?

FYI I usually just cancel the transaction in CiviCRM and leave a note with the reason (usually double charge @ authorize.net) and the date of cancellation.

However, part of that process is that we have double-charges happen often enough that I try to monitor recent donations (via a dashboard widget showing recent contributions in reverse chronological order, plus monitoring the email receipts that I'm always BCCed on) and get in an refund those transactions at authorize.net before they have actually processed.

At authorize.net that is: search/unsettled transactions, then click the transaction number and there, for unsettled transactions, you have the option to 'void'.

So technically, that is a void rather than a refund and it never really hits our bank account, or the customer's credit card account, at all.  So in my mind that is sensible as 'cancel' of that transaction rather than create a new transaction that is a refund.

If you were to miss one and actually have to issue a refund a few days later, it would make more sense to issue a separate transaction with a negative contribution amount (along with a note, including reference to the transaction number of the original transaction), I suppose.

flug

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Re: Advice On Recording Refunded Contributions
October 02, 2013, 06:52:26 am
Quote
Our refunds are mostly for memberships with double processing of online payments (this issue is being addressed)

Does anyone know what the fix for this is?  Is there a bug report?

We have the same problem, maybe 1 of 20 or 1 of 30 transactions double charges at authorize.net.

The timestamps on the double-transactions are so close together, one or two seconds apart usually, that it makes me think it is some kind of civicrm problem rather than a double-submission by the user (or maybe it is more of a 'double-bounce' of the mouse rather than 'hey, that didn't go through, I'll try it again).  Or anyway, even if it is a user problem maybe it is something we could address?


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This forum was archived on 2017-11-26.