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Refunding from the Play and Dates Window

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Occasionally, you may need to refund an entire group of tickets, rather than just those for a single patron. For example, an event gets cancelled, and your management team has decided they want to give refunds instead of issuing gift certificates, vouchers, donations, or some other form of repayment. Instead of doing these refunds one by one (individually), they can be handled as a mass refund for all of the ticket holders to the performance.

Note: You can also do mass refunds from Setup->Batch Functions->UnPrint or Refund a Batch of tickets. The advantage on the Unprint Batch of Tickets window is that you can select tickets by patron, event, and more.

 

Before you do any refunding, please make sure to set up gift certificates and donation campaigns to track refunds appropriately if you are not giving money back.

Do not leave the order on account.

Theatre Manager will generate a refund using the same payment method that was used for the original order. If an order used multiple payment methods, and one of those methods was a previously deposited credit card, Theatre Manager will refund the entire amount to the same credit card. A refund will include

Theatre Manager will NOT refund any Order Fees that are part of the order since they could be for a myriad of reasons that are not related to the tickets being refunded.

You can use this feature iteratively. Examples:
  • Select a group of patrons or tickets that are similar and refund to a donation.
  • Select a different group of tickets (eg subscription) from those remaining and refund to a gift certificate
  • Select another group of tickets (eg subscription - early) from those remaining and refund to a different gift certificate
  • Select the last group of tickets (eg single ticket full price) and refund to their credit card.
You may need to contact your merchant provider to determine if you:
  • have a longer than standard LINKED REFUND capability. Most times, the merchant provider has this set around 120 days, but it can be extended -or-
  • have INDEPENDENT REFUND capability. This means you have the right to refund any amount to a card and are not subject to any recent credit card company rules like refund must be within 120 days, etc.
NOTE: IF YOU ARE PCI SCHEDULE C OR SCHEDULE D: POST DATED/RECURRING PAYMENTS ONLY AND HAVE NOT TURNED ON MERCHANT PROFILES, CREDIT CARDS ARE NOT STORED IN YOUR DATABASE.

An attempt will be made to link the card to a prior authorization to refund without needing the credit card.

If that fails, you will need to use a refund method like Gift Certificate or Donation in step 3 below - any refund method other than Credit Card

To refund tickets through the Attendance tab of the Event setup, you perform the following steps:

  1. Open the Plays and Dates window.
  2. Click the Tab.
  3. Click on the desired performance on the left side.

    This will show a complete list of all patrons who bought tickets to the performance.

  4. Select the patron's ticket(s) to refund.

  5. Click the button at the bottom of the window.

    The Refund Tickets Wizard opens.

  6. Options to refund either
    •    The selected tickets, or
    •    All tickets for this performance
    Verify by trying REFUND A COUPLE OF PATRONS FIRST to ensure that card payments get created and authorized if you choose that option. If people only have shredded cards in your database, they cannot be refunded.
    If you select this, Theatre Manager will only refund tickets in an order where that order contains at least one credit card to pay for it. If you do de-select this option, then all tickets will be refunded - you may have to apply a payment refund on a per patron basis later, depending on what you are doing to refund payments.

    Note: if you refund tickets with card data first, the others will remain in the list. You can then select and refund some of the remaining tickets using another other payment method such as:

    • Refund to Gift Certificate
    • Refund to Donation
    • Refund using Check as need be.
    This further refines how you want Theatre Manager to handle the refund payment options, including:
    • Do not create a refund payment - in which case all refunds will be on account and you will need to refund patrons manually later - or -
    • Create a refund only if a credit card was used for the original purchase. This will refund to the same credit card as long as there is a credit card on file or you have a merchant profile set up for this patron. Anybody with only a shredded card on file will have a payment created, and linked to a prior payment. Should authorization fail, it will need to be addressed later. The partial card number will help you when talking to the patron.

      We recommend AGAINST using the authorizing at time of refund option (refer to refund processing rules) and delay it to end of day.

      Refunding to a credit card biases towards doing linked refunds if it can.

    • Refund to a Donation lets you specify a donation campaign.

      Rules:

      • The value of the donation to the campaign will be the balance on the order after refunding the tickets.
      • .
      • One donation is made per order, even if the patron bought many tickets to the performance in different orders. Theatre Manager will create a note in the Notes Tab of the Donation containing the Event and Seating details for those tickets refunded. Each donation will have a record of the original tickets purchased that made up this donation.
      • The campaign must be set up to allow refunds to tickets to appear in the selection. If you don't have a campaign set for refund to tickets, this option will be disabled.
      • If the ticket was Gifted to another patron, the donation will be created on the ORIGINAL ticket buyer's patron record.
      • The donation giving level range can have any number of ranges which must encompass all values of anticipated refunds from 0.01 through 99999999.99 (otherwise, the donation will not appear in a donation list until the giving levels are fixed)
    • Refund to a Pass or Gift Certificate lets you specify a Pass/Gift Certificate.

      Rules:

      • If using:
        • Dollar Value Gift Certificates: the gift certificate amount will be the dollar value of the balance on the order after refunding the tickets. Thus the balance goes to zero and the gift certificate is automatically the same as the balance
        • Dollar Average/Admission: the pass will be set up to allow the same number of admissions as the tickets refunded. If you refund 2 tickets totaling $80, then the patron will have a pass for 2 tickets valued at $80 for use in the future. Since prices of tickets go up, it is less likely that you would use this option.
      • One refund to the pass is made per order, even if the patron bought many tickets to the performance in different orders. Theatre Manager will create a note in the Notes tab of the Pass/Gift Certificate containing the Event and Seating details for those tickets refunded. Each Pass/Gift Certificate will have a record of the original tickets purchased that made up this Pass/Gift Certificate.
      • The pass/gc must be set up to allow refunds to tickets to appear in the selection. If you don't have a pass/GC set for refund to tickets, this option will be disabled.
      • If the ticket was Gifted to another patron, then the Pass/Gift Certificate will be created on the ORIGINAL ticket buyer's patron record
  7. Click to continue with the refund.
  8. The selected ticket will be refunded and returned for sale if the performance is in the future.

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