There are any number of reasons that you you may need to issue a refund to a customer and several possible outcomes that you may be seeking from said refund. Your goal for your client will dictate the steps that need to be taken to do the refund properly for account balance and bookkeeping purposes. If entering multiple refunds for the same amount on account, you must allow processing time between entering the refunds to avoid the duplicate refund warning.
Below you will find instructions for the most common types of refunds.
Full Refunds and $0.00 balance:
There are any number of reasons why you may want or need to give a client a full refund. Here we'll pretend they've purchased a pair of shoes and are returning them. So our goal here is to give the customer their money back and have no balance remaining from the transactions.
To Enter a Full Refund:
Select the account and click on Transactions.
Click the refund button found to the right of the payment.
You should now see the Pop-up shown above.
Use the drop-down to choose the Refund Type.
Choose a Refund Category.*
Choose a Refund charge code.*
The amount will match the total payment amount.
Click Enter Refund.
You'll be returned to the customer's transactions screen where you'll see the refund noted.
*The refund category should match the charge code that was used for the original charge so that those funds are removed from the correct income category. If the original payment covered more than one income category, tuition, and registration, for example, we suggest choosing the largest charge category.
Full Refund and the client will still owe charges:
In this scenario, you want to do a full refund on a payment but the customer will still need to pay the charges at a later date. We see this most often when a customer was added to the automatic recurring payments in error.
Full Refund with Balance Remaining:
Select the account and click on Transactions.
Find the payment you wish to refund use the arrow to the right and click unapply from all of the charges.
Click the arrow to the right again and choose Refund.
In the Apply to drop-down choose "Payment Balance."
Choose the refund type.
The amount should be populated.
Click enter refund.
The refund and payment should now zero each other out and the charges should all have a balance.
Partial Refunds:
There are several reasons why you may need to enter a partial refund. For our example, we'll say a customer signed up, and paid a registration fee and tuition for 5 months. The total payment was $480. Now 6 weeks later the student has decided to quit. Here we will refund 3 months of unused tuition totaling $270.
To enter a partial refund:
Select the account and click on Transactions.
Click the Enter Refund button at the top of the screen
Scroll down click the arrow to the right of the correct payment and select refund.
Enter the refund date.
Use the type menu to choose a refund payment type.
Choose a Refund (charge code) Category.
Enter the description.
Enter the amount of the refund.
Click the Enter Refund button.*
A pop-up will appear to confirm the refund was entered successfully.
Click the transactions to the left of the screen.
You will see the refund listed in the customer's transactions in Green (fig. 2).
*The Enter Refund button will not be activated until an amount is entered and use the tab key or your mouse to click on some other portion of the screen.
Over Payments:
On occasion, you may miskey a payment and overcharge your customer. In these types of situations, it is easiest to do a partial refund rather than refunding the entire payment and re-running the card for the proper amount which ties up more of your client's available funds. In our example, the customer wants to pay a $90 tuition charge. But we have accidentally run their credit card for $900. So we need to refund the extra $810.
Select the account and click on Transactions.
Click the Enter Refund button at the top of the screen
Scroll down and click "Refund" to the right of the correct payment.
Use the Refund Options drop-down menu and choose "Payment Open Balance."
You should now see the amount of the overage in the Amount field.
Enter the desired date.
Enter Refund type or click to Refund to Original Card.
Enter a Description.
Click the Enter Refund button.
The program will return you to the transactions screen where you should see your refund.
The balance from the original payment should be cleared. - Figure 2