Refunds

Overview

In Wild Apricot you can track refunds for the payment you have already received.
There are two types of refunds:

• Automatic - for online payments. Administrator has to issue the refund from payment gateway interface integrated with Wild Apricot. 
• Manual - for manual or online payments.

Refund is related to a payment record in your Wild Apricot account.

Refund can be:

• Full - when a complete payment amount is returned
• Partial - when only a partial amount is returned

Therefore, a payment record can be refunded and settled with one or several partial refunds.

Automatic refunds

Refunds for online payments can be issued from your payment gateway interface (outside of Wild Apricot). After the refund is issued, payment gateway should automatically communicate with Wild Apricot by sending a refund notice and Wild Apricot will record an automatic refund in its database.

Automatic refunds are supported by the following payment gateways:

• PayPal Standard
• PayPal Pro
• Google Checkout
  Note, Authorize.net does not provide option for automatic refund.

Usually, processing online refund is similar for all supported payment gateways.
Lets take a step-by-step look at how the automatic refund is handled - for example with PayPal Pro.

1. Client pays online (e.g. event registration) for $100.

• Payment transaction for $100 is created in PayPal
• Wild Apricot creates the following corresponding financial records:
  • Payment record for $100
  • Invoice for $100
    After successful payment confirmation from PayPal, payment record is settled with the corresponding invoice and invoice is marked as "Fully paid"

2. Lets say administrator needs to issue a refund, for this example we will use a partial refund of $20.

• To initiate a refund, administrator must go to the payment system (PayPal Pro/Standard or Google Checkout) and find corresponding payment transaction.
• In details of the transaction administrator must find Issue Refund (or similarly named) option 
• Next, administrator must indicate an amount of refund, for this example it will be a partial amount of $20
• A refund notice is created and automatically sent to Wild Apricot after administrator confirms the refund

3. After receiving a refund notice Wild Apricot will do the following:

• record a confirmation that refund notice was received
• create a new financial record - Refund, in our case for $20
• Wild Apricot will try to find a corresponding payment
• If payment is found, Refund will automatically settle with the Payment. In this example it will look like the following:
  • Payment for $80 will still be assigned to the invoice and invoice will be marked as "Partially paid"
  • Payment for $20 will be settled as a refund after invoice will be marked as "Fully paid"
• If the corresponding payment is not found or if the refund notice is not received by Wild Apricot (e.g. due to some technical malfunction) then refund has to be processed manually - see below.

Manual refunds

You can record a manual refund for any payment record in Wild Apricot

Manual refunds are typically used in the following cases:

• Refund was issued manually outside of Wild Apricot (e.g. by check or cash)
• When a refund was issued from the payment gateway but Wild Apricot did not receive a corresponding refund notification
• If the payment was processed by Authorize.net (which can't current record automatic refunds in Wild Apricot)

Record payment-specific refund

Usually, a refund is recorded for a corresponding payment. Find the payment in question - via Contact or via Payments screen.
Note, refund can only be recorded from payments which have open balance (not fully matched to invoices) - if payment is already matched (settled), you need to cancel settlement first.

Here is an example of a fully settled payment for the event.

Click on Cancel settlement button to cancel it.

Now that your payment record has available balance, you can proceed with the refund by clicking on Refund button. On the next screen you can adjust the details as required. For refunds you can also record a custom payment tender.

Record 'on-account' refund

Alternatively, you can also issue a refund directly to a contact without bothering with settlements right away.
To do this, go to Finances > Payments & refunds screen and click on [Add refund] button.

On Add refund screen click on [Select existing contact] and then select your contact from the list that will open in a separate pop-up window.

After you select the contact, fill out the refund details and click on [Save] button.

Refund reduces the available balance for the contact. You will notice that the refund is marked as not settled. To settle the refund, you need to find unsettled payment for the contact and settle it with the refund.

Settling Refunds

Refunds initiated from payment are automatically settled with that payment.
But if you record refunds 'on account', they can be settled later on - this is done from the payment screen:

On the following screen we have a record for the payment that needs to be settled and the refund that needs to be settled with this payment.

Click on Settle button on the corresponding payment record and select the refund.

After this, if you look at the Payments & refunds for this contact you will see that all records are settled and there is no balance for the contact.

Recording Credits

To apply a credit on an an account is just like recording a new payment, See Record Payment and Settle to Invoice