Episode Summary
In this episode our host Bret Alarcon is joined by Senior Technical Consultant Ross Tenaglia and Director of Municipal Support Services, Cullen Barber to discuss the process of refunding transactions back to a credit card. While walking through various refund scenarios, Ross highlights when to refund via Global Sales verse Transaction Update, differences between refunds in 10.3 and 3.1, and how alternate payee logic can come into play.
Recording
Transcript
Bret Alarcon 0:07
Hello, and welcome back, everybody to this week's edition of RecChat. I am your host Bret Alarcon. And today I have with me Ross, and he's going to be talking to you about refunds, including credit card refunds. So I also have Cullen and Tim with us today to they're gonna be moderating and helping answer some questions that you might have. So speaking of questions, if you do have any, please make sure to add them to the q&a section of the chat. So you'll see that in a little bottom area, you'll see a little q&a Window, Click that and you can answer or ask your questions. Try not to put them in the chat the chats a little harder for us to answer questions to, you can use the chat just to make comments if you'd like to. All right, to start us off, Ross, what do we have today? Or what are you going to be talking about today?
Ross Tenaglia 1:00
So yeah, what we'll be talking about is kind of a hodgepodge of refund scenarios, split refunds, especially with credit cards. And ultimately, just some caveats. And, you know, some gotcha points that, you know, with everything going on refunding is certainly more prevalent than actual payments. And we've seen a large caseload of similar issues, different customers. And we're just hoping that this RecChat can shed light on some of them and hopefully, answer some pain points that some people have been experiencing. And yes, I'll answer the first question, Brett and I are wearing the same shirt, we did not plan on it. But we noticed that when we got together, so that was a little funny moment of ours. So we will be also it will be covering 10.3 as well. And 3.1, both kind of scenarios that you may encounter. So I'll get started with 3.1, scenarios and pulling up my Screen here. All right, hope everyone can see this. So great. So I'm already in global sales, I have pulled up my household. And I'll start with probably the most common scenario we've been getting lately is split refunds. And especially with credit cards involved. You can do split refunds with credit cards, especially if it's a credit card or check, credit card, cash, credit card and credit card. All of that can be done. But there's just some things you have to be aware of when processing and a trap that some people fall into that you really want to make sure you're committed to the transaction before following through, which I'll get to in just a moment. So naturally, with any cancellation, you had to head off into purchase history. I am selecting my program here. And I'll just go to cancel and cancel selected item cancellation reason I'm not going to do one right now. And it's in the shopping cart as usual with my $30 refund Button. So with any split refunds, just like a split payment, everything you want to add to it has to be in here and this total paid has to be set to zero. So the moment you start doing ad split refunds, the entirety of the transaction amount has to be in here before you're able to process. So in my case, I am doing credit card and you'll get a drop down so in this scenario, I did do a split payment with two credit cards. And as you can see here, both of the credit card entries it was 15 on one card 15 on another card, same number that's just a dummy card that we can use for testing. But you can see on both here references the receipt number of the original payment and it will tell you how much it is. So when you do that, you have to make sure you change it to 15 and then add refund. Now this is the most critical point during the process. Just like when you do a split payment with credit cards. The moment you hit this Button the card is authorized. So you can call this the point of no return. So you will get some authorization message and l pop over here and then from here on out you have to finish the sale. So I always recommend much like with payments. If it's a split between cash or check with a credit card, do the cash or check first, because you can always back that out by selecting it and deleting a line item, if there are various circumstances that call for it. And then the second card, you would select the remainder 15. Add it over. And generally at this point, you would get your authorization from you know, CardConnect, ETS PlugnPay, whatever you use. And then once everything is zero, you are good to process the transaction.
And then you have process you get your refund, message, and then you get your receipt. Easy as that. Not all people know or they get confused in that process with the split refunds and split payments. And it's no different with 10.3, when you're doing your split payments, everything needs to move over until you're finished.
Bret Alarcon 6:15
So what do you recommend, if we're, we enter something then we realize oh wait, I made a mistake, I need to go back to just recommend finalizing the transaction and then going back afterwards and fixing it.
Ross Tenaglia 6:29
So it depends on what the mistake is, like I said, with the credit cards, you generally have to follow through with it. Luckily, the credit cards do show there. So it's not like you can over refund to the credit card, where in theory, you could over refund the cash distribution, the refund finance distribution.
So credit cards, you you got to follow through with it, you can't really back out of it. Now if the credit cards, I see another question there. If the credit cards don't show up, you can put the receipt number in. And that will find it now if that doesn't work. Generally, that means your credit card Profile that you're using is not linked or managed in the credit card Profile. There's a Manage Profiles where you can link for example, your E commerce, credit card Profile to your retail one. So you can kind of see both transactions on both processors. So that's generally the case if you don't see it.
Cullen Barber 7:43
And Ross can depend on your interface to write some interfaces automatically try to use a global token others maybe like you said more, you may be tied directly to a merchant number, as well. So there's certainly depending on your processor, there's a couple of reasons why that that may appear that way.
Ross Tenaglia 8:06
Yes.
Bret Alarcon 8:10
Their questions are starting to pull in. Do you have a little bit more to show us? Or would you like to get some questions?
Ross Tenaglia 8:16
Well, I can move on to kind of the next, you know, credit card piece in regards to refunding with credit cards. There have been times where customers do refunds and put them on as a credit balance and then afterwards, they will change their mind and I'll put my camera back on and change their minds that they want a refund back to the credit card. So in 3.1, you can't do that the moment refund is processed as a credit balance or even as like a refund finance and you want to reverse it that's basically ended and you can't refund back to the card anymore. It's a security fraud, you know, component to it. And so once that happens, you really can't refund back to the credit card anymore. And I see there was a question in regards to that refund finance.
Bret Alarcon 9:27
Yes, the whole finance reversal.
Ross Tenaglia 9:32
So that was actually one piece I was going to get to was the old refund finance portion because we do see that a lot. So both 10.3 and 3.1, 10.3, I won't show in the video, but there is a document that covers exactly those steps how to reverse reapply and reprocess a refund if it was refund finance by accident, and Brett will be able to share that afterwards. But for 10 for 3.1, it's actually a pretty single motion process to do. So for example, if I sold an activity, since I cancelled it, I just had to resell it again, just so there's some sort of payment on it.
All right, so I'll do my $30 payment. And I'll just pay for it as cash simple enough.
And although I'm working with activities here, it's pretty much the same for any module, they're all interchangeable, and process here.
So I'll do my refund finance. I actually do want to preview the receipt. So if there was an accidental refund finance, the first thing you'll need is the receipt number of the refund. So you can go and household inquiry to find this out if it was done during the day, you can run your GL GL reports, refund reports, you have numerous tools to find out the receipt in question. So there's the program payment transaction. Oh, no, it's just transaction update, my bad. So transaction update, if you haven't used it before, is generally reserved for payment fixes, not fee fixes. And this is where a lot of confusion comes on when to use global sales versus when to use transaction update. And the way I always describe it is use transaction update if whatever was charged, or refunded in terms of dollar amount was correct. But the method of collecting the money was not. That's pretty much the simplest way I can describe when to use transaction update. In our case, the refund dollar amount of $30 was correct, but method of refund finance was not. So I would go to here, put in my receipt number and Click on Reverse receipt payments, it shows my $30 refund finance. And then you can change the user drawer date depending on if you caught it days afterwards, you would generally want to do the reversal on the day that it originally took place. And then you have two buttons reverse and reverse and payment. If you Click reverse, that will end the process and just put the $30 on as a credit balance. If this was a payment, it would remove a $30 payment and leave $30 as a balance due. If that's what you want, that's all you got to do. If you're undoing the refund finance and want to redo the refund, you know as cash, you would do reverse and payment because reversing payment puts the money on as a credit balance temporarily. But then it brings you right back to global sales, where you're then able to go to the payment Screen here. And then from here, you can use the US refund credit option to finish the sale. So that's generally what you would do in this scenario.
Bret Alarcon 14:25
And I can talk a little bit more about the 10.3 one if you like Ross.
Ross Tenaglia 14:29
Yeah. If you have a scenario that you Yeah, like in your system.
Bret Alarcon 14:35
Yeah, well, I don't have it on my system, but I'll just briefly add on to it. So in 10.3, it's kind of the same thing, but with extra steps that makes three one better. But anyway, and so with 10 Three, when you do the finance reversal using the built in utility in 10.3, it's going to turn that refund finance and to refund now as a cash refund. So probably 99% of the time You don't really want a cash refund. So what you need to do then is pay cash back into the household and create a credit with that cash payment. And then once it's back on the household as a credit, you can refund it however you actually needed to. So if it was cash, you don't even need to do that step. If it was any other method, that's how you, you would have to get it back in to refund it.
Ross Tenaglia 15:21
Yep. And we will have information. It's a nice document has screenshots step by steps that will take you throughout the entire process that you can keep handy.
So before, do we have any other major questions in relation,
Bret Alarcon 15:40
I see one popping up quite frequently. It's asking it looks like the general question is what happens if we refund a credit card and then the credit card that you refunded to was expired or cancelled? Or just no good.
Ross Tenaglia 15:58
So yes, we we have been getting that a lot. And we've actually been talking with our credit card partners about this. Naturally during these times, you probably get an influx of this kind of scenario, we do want customers to be mindful that these credit card processors have been noting a lot of fraud. So you may not necessarily want to go into it. If you're getting a lot of people doing this, maybe some sort of verification on it. But if you feel comfortable that the customer is being truthful with you, and you want to undo the refund, and then put the money back on as a credit balance, the steps to do so are identical. And 10. and 3.1, other than some word, check out some phrase changes here. So the money is a wash at this point. And you just want to put them back on their account to process. But you don't want to recharge a card and you want your books to balance. So the first step you would do and that is to link your no valid credit card Profile or no valid credit card device, all RecTrac databases have this, the key thing is to link it and then unlink it before doing any other transactions are you going to have a world of hurt. So under Profile assignments, and your credit card, oh, my database is bad, I don't have one. So let me add one real quick.
As you can see, there's no setup for this Profile, because it's basically a dud, it just allows you to use the credit card pay code without charging credit card. So I always recommend you leave Profile assignments open because you're going to come right back in here and you don't want to forget. So you can use your favorites or just browse out and Type to global sales. And say that $30 of refunds I did earlier, were cards were bad or shut off, you would simply just go back into the household. And you would go right to the payment Screen, you're not going to resell, you're not going to make any kind of adjustments on any programs. And you're simply going to put a $30 credit card payment. And then you're going to add this as a credit. Items. I linked it to the wrong user because they're brought up plug and play again. So if you got this, you have a linkage issue. And the nice thing with 3.1 is you can make these changes, and you don't have to log in and log out like you do with 10.3. So if I hit add credit, it'll drop it right in there. And that's your indication that you didn't charge a card and then simply process the transaction. And I'll do a preview receipt so everyone can see the end result. And then you'll have a message at the bottom that you have a payment and a credit balance. And this is your indication that it's a dud, there's no reference to a mask, credit card, or anything like that. And then once you're done, very important, remove that no valid from the user that is processing the correction or you'll spend the rest of the day ringing up credit cards and not collecting any money. One just last point about using a no valid is it will not show up on your credit card report. That's it's a very important piece credit card report will only show real credit card transactions. So you can see in your cash journal, your GL show up on the RecTrac financial reports, just not the credit card report. So you would, you know, finance would have to be understanding of what occurred and the means you took to remedy it.
Bret Alarcon 20:27
Awesome. Thank you for that Ross. All right, we got a couple of thank you thank yous from the chats as well.
Ross Tenaglia 20:35
Great. And just on my last credit card, point I wanted to make. Naturally with cancellations, a lot of people have been canceling items that are on with installment billing. Sometimes it's one month, sometimes it's multiple months. And customers have been kind of confused and how the process goes. And I just want to give clarity on it may not win any fans over with this one. But it is the nature of credit card security. Every installment Bill toward a credit card is considered an individual transaction, they don't get lumped together. So if you have $15 bills, and you're trying to refund three months of them, granted, it's a total of 45, you cannot do one lump refund to $45 you have to do split refunds. So each month you have to do a split refund of $15. Select the credit card record, add it over just like we saw earlier. Until all three records or however many months you are refunding to refund the product to return refund the entirety that you're trying to do. Obviously, it's not the most ideal, but it will work. And that's how you would go about the process of doing installment billing refund when it's dealing with credit cards. If it's ACH, no issues there, it's just a check pay code, you can do a total grand amount of whatever you want and the refund method of finance or apply. Or likewise with the lump balance.
Cullen Barber 22:18
Hey Ross one of the thing with ETS and refunds. You mentioned they had told us they'd seen a pretty big uptick in fraud last year. So I believe they still have many merchants set up where they're only allowed to refund one transaction per day in a batch, which is squirrely. So it actually goes through RecTrac fine. So if you do five or six refunds RecTrac reports back, it's fine because we get a success back from ETS. But what they do before they settle ETS, they see more than one refund, they actually hold the batch. So the refund doesn't go through. And basically if and those of you that use ETS, you've probably had to do that you have to call ETS and basically approve the refunds that are beyond just a single refund in a batch. So I'm not sure if they're still doing that. I've heard that maybe they are for some merchants. So kind of be aware of that.
Ross Tenaglia 23:20
Yep, that was very good point. And yeah, if you're doing a lot of refunds a day, make sure you verify with them everything is going okay with that.
Bret Alarcon 23:36
We actually had a good comment from Kim, going back to when you're talking about no valid, they say they actually have a separate user setup as a no valid user. So instead of just having to relink everything every single time they need to make a fix, they just log into that user and do the fix there. So
Ross Tenaglia 23:55
even better. So I do see a question about a friend of a parent paying for a kid and that was actually going to be kind of one of my other touches granted moving away from credit cards but credit cards can actually still apply. That would be the alternate payee question so alternate pay, you see if you're asking this question you probably already have it enabled
Cullen Barber 24:29
and just so you know, Ross, Devon is that's kind of a follow up she
Ross Tenaglia 24:33
Okay,
Cullen Barber 24:34
she originally it was she was trying to do a refund. She I believe they did an alternate payee. And now they're trying to refund both. And so how do you, you know, they both two households made a payment for the same person toward the same program. How do you go about doing the refund for each one of them?
Ross Tenaglia 24:53
Yep. So I'll do a alternate payee transaction real quick. Okay, so alternate payees is still going to be a split payment idea. I have a credit balance, don't I. So with alternate payees, you generally want to do the alternate person first. So if they're paying, and I'm just going to do cash in this scenario, you would Click on the alternate pay my co worker, Nick Salvatori is going to pay for it because he's so nice.
And if he's paying for that portion, he pays 15. And then you'll see after I do that, it's back to me. And I'll pay the other portion. And all as well. So with alternate payee, when you cancel an item, it's going to let you know that an alternate payee helps pay for it. So as you'll see here, you'll have the pop up, that will show you how much they paid, and their household number and their name. So it's something you just need to either write down mentally jot, just so you can process because it will not let you refund, the individual prior to the alternate pays total allotment is refunded first.
Bret Alarcon 26:59
It looks like we had a quick question pop up, two quick questions pop up about alternate payees. So what if the alternate payee is not linked to the household,
Ross Tenaglia 27:09
then it's not alternate payee. In short, the entirety of the transaction was recognized by RecTrac. As the household, maybe the credit card was a different credit card not associated to anyone on the household. But for all extensive purposes. RecTrac doesn't know about that. So you would continue the refund as you normally would. If it is a different individuals credit card get, they will get the refund, there's no doubt about that. It is their credit card. But the receipt is going to reference the owners household. That's the whole point of alternate payee is so that their household is associated with that particular refund or payment for that example.
Bret Alarcon 28:04
And the next question is, so if you're using alternate payee, will the transaction show up on both household transaction histories?
Ross Tenaglia 28:12
Yep, it's, it's a transaction linked to one household and another transaction linked to another. So they're going to be split between the two. And you know, one of the you know, main examples, you see that is, you know, with the childcare statements, you can lump together both parents or whoever. So yeah, that's the intended purpose of alternate payee. And that's why you would generally want to use it as opposed to fake alternate payee where you just use someone else's credit card, but ringing up the transaction as your own.
Bret Alarcon 28:49
Awesome. All right, we got about two minutes left and about one more question. So let's crank this out. When processing large amounts from the use apply and processing, is there a way to link a receipt number to each dollar amount?
Ross Tenaglia 29:03
Let me read that again, when processing large amounts.
Bret Alarcon 29:09
Are you just looking for reference, Debbie? To the receipt number tied to each dollar amount that you're refunding that you could later run and report? I hope so. Oh, Timmy. Sorry, wrong, Debbie. Let's see. We'll try and get back to yours.
Ross Tenaglia 29:31
Yeah, we might have to answer that later with some more context information with that not entirely sure.
Bret Alarcon 29:39
All right. And then Debbie can quickly popped in with one more so the alternate payee must be set up with the when the original payment is taken.
Ross Tenaglia 29:46
That is correct. Yes. So it's a simple Toggle and the static parameters or daily processing Profile, turn that on and then you're able to have that Alternate Payee Button shop and global sales payments Screen and use that functionality from there on out. But it is not retroactive for obvious reasons.
Bret Alarcon 30:09
Awesome. Thank you very much for us, we're about at the end of our time. So if you did miss any of this session, or you want to watch it later, we are recording this. And we'll be posting it to our portal or online portal, so you can watch it there. Also, we'll be tracking all the questions asked. So if we weren't able to get to your question, we'll have a report at that same place, you can watch the video with all the questions and the answers asked there. So if you need to reference anything that was asked today, the report will be there. Alright, well, with that, thank you very much for us. You've been very informative on credit cards and refunds. So All right, great, final words.
Ross Tenaglia 30:59
Well, weather's getting nice. So I know Vermont is going to have a beautiful weekend. Hope the rest of the country is so get outside and get out of the office or your home office or wherever you're working out nowadays.
Bret Alarcon 31:13
Much. Agreed. All right. Well, thank you everybody for attending, and we'll see you in the next RecChat.
Cullen Barber 31:19
Thanks, everybody.
Ross Tenaglia 31:19
Alright, bye.