Refunds, Reversals, and Returns
Transactions are easier to understand when they happen the first time. However, life is such that things cannot always be easy. There are three (3) terms Core uses very differently and you must understand them before manipulating member transactions.
Refund
This one is the most straight forward. Member gives you money or something gets scheduled and then it needs to be refunded back to the member. There are multiple ways to refund money to the member. The most common is while removing someone from the program; there is an option for refunding the member through the removing of the roster process. You can also refund any item from the item's detail page or through the refund request system if your association has it enabled.
All the ways to make refunds are permission based.
Some things to keep in mind about Refunds
Different Types of refunds:
Credit Card: : If the original item was run as a credit card, you can refund it to the credit card, this is the fastest way to refund a credit card. If you are refunding the credit card within the same day of running it, you might have the ability to
Voidthe transaction, which should make it go away from the members account almost instantly. You can refund partial Credit Card amounts but you can only void the full total.ACH/EFT: If the original transaction was ran as an ACH/EFT you can refund the full amount back to that bank account. Partial refunds are not allowed and it is strongly recommended NOT to refund items that have not settled yet. In general don't refund items back to the bank account during the first 4-5 days.
As an Account Credit: Core has a built in Account Credit system. This means any unit can have Credits in their account to use at a later date. You can chose to refund an amount as an account credit so that the member can use it at a later time.
Refund Offline: An offline refund means you are giving the member the refund some other way that Core does not need to report. If you are giving a check or cash back or trading unicorns you would make that entry out of whatever system you are generating that transaction.
A refund does not make an item due again.
Offline Refunds don't export or hit any revenue.
Reversal
All is good and well but sometimes something gets marked paid and it wasn't paid (Typically on a Monday or late Friday afternoon). We need a reversal. To revert an item is to make the item due again. Core handles reversals a little different depending on the type of transactions:
For Cash or Check transactions Core assumes the money was never exchanged and reverses the original item as if it didn't happen to begin with.
CC and EFT are actually run when the user selects them. Money IS exchanged so core creates a new item to be paid for later. When a CC or EFT item is reversed you might want to issue a credit to mark the correct item paid. This is not always and you must evaluate when processing the reversal.
Returns, NSFs, Bounces
The most common scenario for Return is when an EFT/ACH that was ran and the bank says 'no bueno'. Core typically refers to this as a Return but the terms NSFs and bounce can be used interchangeably. For EFTs Core automatically processes the return 1 business day after the bank notifies the gateway of the issue. When the return is detected (automatically) Core generates an item to go against the original item to reflect that there has not been any money collected. Then Core generates a new item to be paid for later. This means for a $10 transaction would now show as:
$10 (paid)
-$10 (returned)
$10 (unpaid to be collected)