RecChat: Activity Section Age and Cancellation Updates - 10/05/2023
Table of Contents
Episode Summary
There are two fairly recent changes to the activity module we wanted to highlight. The ability to view Begin and Ending Ages in your Activity Sections DataGrids, as well as the ability to Refund Now during Bulk Activity Registrations (for payments originally received as Credit Cards or eChecks). Join us for a conversation highlighting these recent Activity Enhancements!
Recording
Transcript
Bret Alarcon 0:08
Hello and welcome to RecChat. I'm your host Bret Alarcon. So today we're going to talk about some new activity enhancements. So these are the ability to be to view begin and ending ages and activity section DataGrids, and the ability to refund now during bulk activity registrations, and that's for payments that are originally received as credit card or echeck payments. So before we start, if, if you have any questions, Click that little q&a Button down at the bottom that'll pop up a little Window where you can ask your questions, and we'll get the answers. And also, there's a little chat button down there that you can Click and make a little comment, if you'd like to along the way. So with that, I'll hand it over to Zack, how're you doing today?
Zach Malloch 0:49
I'm doing very well, Bret, how about you?
Bret Alarcon 0:51
Doing alright!
Zach Malloch 0:53
Okay. Well, as Brett mentioned, we've got some just this might be a very, very short session, we've got two enhancements, fairly recent enhancements activities to talk about here. So go ahead and share my Screen. And we can go ahead and get started with this. I assume you can see my RecTrac Bret?
Bret Alarcon 1:12
We can!.
Zach Malloch 1:13
All right, great. So let's start with the slightly older one. So if we go into activity section management, if I spell it right, there's activity manager there section management. If we wanted to cancel an entire section with everybody enrolled in it, we've always had this ability to go to more and go to cancel the section. What this gives us the option to do previously is we could do refund apply or refund finance. So this would have put credit on to the customer's household, or would have given them a check request to send them a check as their refund. But for those that paid with credit cards, unfortunately, there was no refund now option. Now there is a refund now option. And this will as it tells you right here on the Screen, it will attempt to refund credit cards, e check and scholarship payments only. So it won't refund now to cash because the people have actually have to be here, the credit cards, the E check and the scholarship payments, those can all be refunded even if the customer is not in person. So that's a really nice feature here, if you have to bulk cancel classes. You know, obviously, people mostly wanted this when COVID was just starting up and we had to do a lot of cancellations. We didn't have it then. But we do have it now. And we will have it from this point forward. This was introduced in 3.1.10.22. And the scholarship piece was added in 3.1.10.23. So just in case you're looking for these options, you do have to be in those latest versions, or at least 23. If you want to do scholarship refunds at least 22 If you want to be able to refund now to credit cards. And this was tested against all credit card providers, I believe so it doesn't matter which gateway you're actually using. So if there are any questions about that, certainly bring it up. I actually think I might have seen one pop up, right. Is that right?
Bret Alarcon 3:08
Yes. Can you do this for tickets as well?
Zach Malloch 3:12
So for right now, it is feel like I saw something written up for tickets, but I don't know. See ticket management, you don't even know if there is necessary. That's access ticket management. And each Point Of Sale ticket management. Right there. They don't know that there is just a there is a cancel tickets. So let's see what happens here. Let's cancel all and it's not there yet. I believe I did see a write up to bring this over to ticket cancellations. But Bret, maybe you could write that up just to verify whether or not we do have that or not
Bret Alarcon 3:59
Sure, yup. Couple questions also came in through the chat, would it be a good idea to run a report first to see the paid via credit card or check so that we can go back and refund those checks or is there a different way.
Zach Malloch 4:15
So I think that what you would want to do or the easiest way to do it would be to let's go ahead and cancel that section again. So if you do the refund apply that will or sorry the refund now that will refund for everybody that processed any of these transactions and then there will be a backup refund option. So if you wanted to then just put the credit back on somebody's household or send them out a refund check. Then this is kind of the second piece so if somebody did not pay with credit card ECheck or scholarship then it will do this process and so you have the option of either refund finance or refund apply. Once again refund finances sending them a check refund apply is just putting the credit on the household for them to use later. so hopefully that answers that
Bret Alarcon 5:04
you opt out to not refund scholarships,
Zach Malloch 5:08
I don't believe so a kind of that I mean, especially with the verbage, it does seem like it will do all have those, there's no option to just skip the scholarship, it will give you the report of all the refunds. And you can decide not to email the receipts to your customers immediately if you didn't want to. And then you could, you know, theoretically, scholarships would be the least common payment Type for registrations. So just getting that detail from the CSV, and then manually dealing with those couple of scholarship pieces could potentially work. Now the other thing you could potentially do if you just don't refund scholarships, and I would suggest testing this Demo, but my guess would be that, if we go into Profile assignments, and we look at the payment Profile that is linked to your session. So mine is not in my user or in my user might be in my user group here. Yeah, there's my payment Profile. So if we remove the scholarship option from the refund codes, then I don't think it would do that refund. So pay code restrictions have allowed refund pay codes for refund now. So if we just took scholarship off of this in your play in your payment Profile, then I would assume that it would not refund scholarships, because you don't have permission to use those scholarship refunds and the cancellation processes using those global sales payment, that logic. So I would make sure you do not have access to scholarship, refund pay codes, and then maybe do a test registration and your or set this up in your Demo database, do a test registration in your Demo database, paying for it with a scholarship and then do the cancellation and see if they get refunded. And then that would be an easy way to do so.
Bret Alarcon 7:02
Nikki saying My Refund option for one refund now fails does not show any options.
Zach Malloch 7:10
Before you Click refund now do you have the Do you have refund applying refund finance as far as refund options because that could also be a payment Profile thing. If you don't have access to refund finance or apply, then it would not show you these in the drop down?
Bret Alarcon 7:30
And the last question at the moment. Anyway, do you have a reason or any way to have a reason for cancellation option, which would be printed on receipt?
Zach Malloch 7:41
That's a good question. I don't I mean, this is you guys are seeing the Field as it exists right now. And I don't see that here. But it certainly seems like that'd be a very reasonable enhancement request. And we just add something in here like add cancellation comment to the receipt or something along those lines. Right. Could you add that to your list of things to get looked at?
Bret Alarcon 8:08
Yup can do! a few more popped in? Oh, Nikki replied to know the only thing that shows up as refund now. So look into it. Thank you.
Zach Malloch 8:17
Okay, yeah, I would guess if that's your issue, then Nikki?
Bret Alarcon 8:20
Haley is asking, is there a way to email our accounting department directly if refund finance is selected.
Zach Malloch 8:28
So not directly from this Screen. But we do have some refund reports. So in assuming you don't have a refund to interface, I would guess there is a we can basically do a GL interface but for refunds. So RecTrac will create all these refund finance requests and then you can run the interface and automatically send them over to your finance department. The refund report However, after you do this, I would filter it down and just say refund Type of refund finance. And then put in your date from when you did your bulk cancellation and then you'll get a report that you could send to finance that would have all of those requests. Yeah, that would be probably the most direct way to do that.
Bret Alarcon 9:18
And then Teresa's following up with the cancellation option on the receipt part canceled do the weather canceled due to lack of participation etc. And does this cancel the activity section or just registrations and how it impacts future cloning of setups
Zach Malloch 9:37
so it's really this piece right here. So if you turn this Toggle on then it will cancel the section as well. As far as end of year sort of stuff and cloning and the like it especially if you're doing the archive process. So activity and I think that's actually a separate menu Add Section archive right there. So it's not, there's no filter that says it only look for active activities. So if you have your canceled activity show up in here, then you should still tell it that you can create new sections. If you want to clone those sections. Or if you clone from a cancelled section, it will clone it as an active section from that point. So where you could change it to active after clone, but I think it just creates it as an active class anyway. So I don't believe that there's any impact for for future cloning. But by having that canceled status, you can then run your activity, bottom line reports or your Comparison Reports year after year, and you can see how many of them might have been canceled or not.
Bret Alarcon 10:53
and they're saying we have actually run this on a few activities. And it gives you a report with as a detailed description, household number, a bunch of it.
Zach Malloch 11:02
Yeah, it's a custom, it's a customizable, the refund report is customizable. So if there's fields on this, that you want, that you don't get, then you can always update the output, and that'll create a clone of it, and then you can customize that cloned version of the output.
Bret Alarcon 11:21
No questions,
Zach Malloch 11:23
just for one second.
Zach Malloch 11:34
Alright, I got the mute Button in time. So the second one is maybe even faster than this first one. So if we go to section management, and we go all the way over here, we can see that there's the beginning age and an ending age column. Now in the DataGrid. Now if you're if you're using customized activity section management screens, or if you have used DataGrid template, then you might not see these fields by default when you come in here. But if you're using the VSI, default design, you will see it or if you don't, if you haven't customized, anything you will see it can always come in to show settings and find that Ctrl F age. There's the beginning age and the ending Age Field. So these will be there regardless of whether you can see them or not. And you can just Toggle them on or off as you wish to. So these were added in 3.1 Point 10.25. And when I first looked at this, it had been several days, or maybe even a week after I had run my update. But these were all zeros anyway, basically what it's doing is interpreting your rules. So any activity sections that have any rule that has age attached to it, it will take those details, and it will fill in those age ranges. So in something like this, I don't have an age rule. In this one, I do have an age rule. Mine are all zeros when I first came in here. And when I checked with somebody in the implementation department, they identified that there is this create AR section begin age and end age. So this is something that is created when you upgrade or you do your update to 3.1.10.25. If for any reason there's an issue with your scheduler and this does not run, then you're just going to see zeros even if you've updated your your rules since you ran that update. So this does have to run at least once. So if you go into you're on 3.1.10.25 At least and you go into activity section, either inquiry or management and you don't see those begin age in the age fields filled in with values. And you do know that you have some age rules and restrictions. Then, at that point, I would go into your scheduled events management to see if this is there and then just manually run it. And then that should do it for you. Okay, and I see another question came in a little bit more about the refunds Bret?
Bret Alarcon 14:15
Yes. For refund now option. What happens if someone paid with a credit card and a credit card?
Zach Malloch 14:22
So I think it'll do a split refund at that point. So basically, because you can only process refunding credit cards, echecks in scholarship payments, and it should do a refund now for that portion and then it'll fall into whatever you do here. So if it's refund apply, it'll just put it back on to the credit if it's refund finance, so we'll send the check request or create a check request.
Bret Alarcon 14:50
Thats it for the questions.
Zach Malloch 14:52
Okay. Nope, just something Yeah. Yeah. Well, then I think that that's basically it though. I mean, those are definitely the the two notable activity enhancements that have come out recently. And I wanted to just make everybody a little bit more aware of them. See, Laurie is saying for the age thing, I have a class that is five to 10. And it shows to as five to 11. So why would that be? I mean, my guess would be something to do with the rule. Let's see. So five to 11. Let's just go into the section that doesn't have any age rules on it right now,
Bret Alarcon 15:38
10.99.
Zach Malloch 15:40
Yeah, so. the 10 dot. Now that then that should be accurate. Somebody posts or Laurie posted that the rule is from five years old to 10.99 years old. Just make sure, yeah, so none of these are age rules, add an age rule. Switch it around, we'll call it five to 10 year old, we'll just get rid of one of these guys and update it. So five to 10.99.
Zach Malloch 16:38
Save that, and this res
Zach Malloch 16:51
they will just
Zach Malloch 16:52
right? so I must have some issue with this guy. So let me go into a different section. Something that is also 00 on the beginning age ending age.
Zach Malloch 17:22
And we'll just save it directly to make sure that there's nothing that will prevent me from saving like the last one. Okay, that one looks good.
Zach Malloch 17:36
We'll just create a quick age rule.
Zach Malloch 18:05
And I would guess that this is checking one of our tables. So it might take up to 55 seconds or so for it to update and the DataGrid here.
Bret Alarcon 18:18
Okay. Some other things that came in my way. Let's see, most of our activities are showing us age 1.5 to 155, no matter what the class is, why would that be happening?
Zach Malloch 18:38
Well, I mean, I would check to see, I mean, just look at your rules tab. That's what it's interpreting, maybe there's a rule linked at a higher level. That's doing something and it seems like an AV. So Kevin is saying that he makes a 6.99 to seven. So maybe it's doing a little bit of a rounding thing. Where Kaylene hopefully I'm pronouncing that properly, I can see the beginning begin slash and H columns. They have the ages listed, but they're grayed out and say unable to sort until all records have been retrieved. So that actually would make me think that it might be running into that scheduled event. I might see if you can find this event and try running it again. Maybe it only ran partially, initially. It doesn't hurt anything to run it I just run it again myself before I tell you guys to do that. I'm pretty certain it will not cause any issues.
Bret Alarcon 19:42
I saw it breifly and it said 11.
Zach Malloch 19:46
I've got that 115 also were age 1.5 to 115. So let me just see what that 115 is pulling from
Zach Malloch 20:05
Okay, so this is I mean, this is linked to higher up. So that is very likely why I am seeing it in so many places. So let's go to the fall community lessons at the activity level.
Bret Alarcon 20:31
Well, then she says, if you're a section Management and Click Load all results and ungrazed the columns,
Zach Malloch 20:37
okay, then, yeah, so I must not have enough activities to need to go further. Like I'm not filtering as lower than any like, if this number is higher than what I'm displaying. It just means I'm not I haven't loaded the whole DataGrid yet. So if that makes sense. Which one was this? Like? Kayak lesson was right. Could be lessons.
Zach Malloch 21:03
Maybe I have too many Tabs open.
Zach Malloch 21:16
Now ready to go. That was what I was in. Right there was
Bret Alarcon 21:20
that one for 25 to for 40
Zach Malloch 21:24
oh this guy right here.
Bret Alarcon 21:25
Yeah 25 for 1.
Zach Malloch 21:27
I was looking for that's what it was, I put in the activity name there, rather than there's our full canoe lessons section. Okay, yeah, this is the one that had the the 115. So this is 512 511. Go to the activity management 512. There and then under the Rules tab older than or equal to 12 Younger than or equal to, I mean, in my case, it actually says 115 years old. So that's why it is showing there.
Zach Malloch 22:19
Okay, so the rounding seems like that is an issue with the rounding. So Bret, maybe you could add that one as well, or check to see I would just I would not be surprised if that one's already been reported. Okay.
Bret Alarcon 22:30
Yeah, I'll take a look at that. For your age, are you not putting it and age? Is it just assuming no one's gonna live to 115?
Zach Malloch 22:44
i Yeah, that's kind of because you know, 99. There are people that go above that. So at least in my case, I just said 100.
Bret Alarcon 22:53
Okay, I just didn't know if that was a default, since it seems like 115 is a common.
Zach Malloch 22:59
Yeah, I'm not sure what it's interesting that Joyce's is also 115. I'd be curious what Joyce's rule actually says. And then Kevin is saying, I'm also noticing the age ranges, the maximum range for all the age rules from a higher level, it doesn't appear to evaluating whether the age rule actually applies to section. So the answer there is, the age rule does apply to the section, if it's linked at a higher level, it might not be the one linked to the section. But if there is an age rule at the higher level, both of that age rule and the age rule at the section are affecting that activity. And the combination of restrictions between both of those is actually I would be what I would assume the results should be. So if one said, you have to be between 10 years old and 20 years old to register, and the other side, you have to be between 15 and 2515 to 20 is actually the only valid age range, that would actually work in that case, because that's the overlap between those two rules. So maybe that's what you're running into there, Kevin. So I definitely think the the rounding piece, because we very common like we it's our best practice to tell people to make sure that you put in like 10.99 If the top age is 10, because otherwise, as soon as somebody is 10 years old, in one day, they're over 10.00. So I'm sure that that would get a lot or that would get very quick attention. If anybody is noticing other issues that seem buggy with that, just go ahead and call into support or start a ticket through chat or something along those lines. And this is a newly released feature. And of course, whenever we do that, we do tend to find that there are a couple of things that were not anticipated, like the rounding issue, for example, but Deb has been pretty Delete. Let's see. Sorry, I got distracted Kevin responded. We've got rules that apply to special sessions or seasons, but those are the age ranges being displayed for all of the sections. Kevin, I think I would have to actually look at or have I just adjusted to have somebody from support actually look at the way that things are set up. Because every age, like the age rule that is attached to the season will apply to every section that's attached to that season. If you're seeing the age ages, on a section that is not attached that season, matching those, and that's where we're running into a bug. But I guess, the one thing I would say is always, always, always, if you're troubleshooting, the way fees or rules are working, always look at the item that is actually being sold. So down to the actual section here. Because that will show not only the rules link directly to the section, but any rules that are linked anywhere higher up than that that are affecting it. And so if you see the word age listed more than once under the criteria description, then it's being affected by more than one age rule. And it's probably something going on with that. But anyway, hopefully that gives you guys at least a little bit of information to start with, we will get that written up as far as the rounding issue immediately.
Bret Alarcon 26:04
I'm not seeing it. So I'll write it up right now.
Zach Malloch 26:07
Yeah. Awesome. And then we will be back here in tttt. It is yeah, two weeks. So that the 19th we will have another RecChat topic. I don't know what it is yet, but we'll be interested as much as you are. So look for the email and I'll talk to everybody soon.
Bret Alarcon 26:29
Thanks, everyone.
Zach Malloch 26:30
Thanks a lot.