Where did money get refunded to?

We have been frequently asked how to track WHERE money for refunded tickets is going. Is it going to:

a gift certificate
a donation
being left on account, or
actually refunded to the patron?

It is a very good question. There is no one report that can tell you all this, primarily because of the fundamental nature of how accrual accounting works. But if you refund to donations or gift certificates, there is a way get reports for this

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 uses accrual accounting. In simplistic terms, it means a payment only pays down the balance of an order - you cannot tell how a particular ticket was paid for. Please read a detailed explanation
When trying to report on refunds, a similar dilemma occurs. If you refund some tickets in an order that contains donations, passes, or other items, you cannot tell exactly what the refund was for, since it only decreases the balance payable on the order to the patron.

The following sections describe:

A quick outline of what happens in accrual accounting during a ticket refund
How to best track what money was refunded to (gift certificate, donation or refund)
The 3 key report areas/data sources that can be used to determine how you gave money back

If you did not create a custom donation campaign or pass/gc to return tickets to, or you used one of the other ticket return campaigns or passes, you can change existing orders/refunds if that helps

What happens to accounting during a ticket refund?

In very simplistic terms, when you refund a ticket (or donation, pass, etc), two things happen:

Refunding one or more tickets causes:
- you to owe the patron something in return -and-
- until you SELL them something, the order will have a balance owing. This shows up throughout order and patron lists in Theatre Manager in blue.
To address the order balance payable to the patron, you need to one of the following to convert the payable owed the patron:
- convert the order balance payable to a donation, - or -
- convert the balance payable to a gift certificates -or-
- give the patron money (cash or refund to credit card)

	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.
	You can tell how much you refunded to an event using the Transaction history by event report (see also the youtube video explanation). However, this report only tells you how much you refunded, and not what you refunded money to.
	You can refer to reports that show where money went* if you've refunded tickets to passes, gift certificates and/or donations.*

How should we best track what we refunded money to?

If you require to have more understanding to WHO OR WHAT you refunded money to, you need to be explicit in what you use to 'pay the customer back'. If you simply refund the tickets and give the patron nothing in return (i.e. you leave an order balance payable to the customer), you will have a hard time tracking what you turned the money into.

	VERY IMPORTANT: At a minimum, we suggest refunding the money to gift certificate or a donation that you give a very specific name to - which can then be tracked. The mass refund of tickets option supports return to gift certificate or donation. Do not leave the order on account.
	EQUALLY IMPORTANT: If you want to track refunds by event, make a separate donation of gift certificate for each event that you are refunding and take care to refund only tickets to the appropriate campaign or gift certificate.

By way of short example:

If you create one or both of these below, then refund tickets and buy:

a gift certificate called COVID certificate, you can track refunds to passes by counting the passes.
donation campaign called COVID donation campaign, you can track refunds to donations by looking at this campaign

What reports can I use to see where money went?

If you refunded all tickets to donations or gift certificates, you can get an accurate sense of what you exchanged things to using a report from one of three report categories:

Transaction Reports that show the sales/refunds and specifically what was done and to whom by date/time. Transactions are summarized into:

the Daily Sales Summary when they are created -and-

the G/L reports during end of day processing.
Note:when end of day is done reports in the three categories match - until a subsequent transaction occurs.

Daily Sales Summary report for ticket refunds/exchanges and also sales of passes and donations in a date range

GL Summary reports for a range of dates or the end of day GL reports or exports

Any difference between ticket refunds and purchases of gift certificates/donations means that the patron received their refund by cash/card/or check.

Finding where your money is

How much ticket money was refunded?	If you want to simply find the total value of tickets refunded and who you refunded them to refer to the transaction history report If you want to see how much you refunded on a daily basis or by event, use Daily Sales Summary report category - selected by event. These are based on the same transactions above and if your criteria is the same, they will match. One that might particularly help is the Sales/Exchanges/Refunds report which shows sales per day (likely none), the exchanges (likely none) and the refunds, as well as the net change in sales to the event. Note: Daily sales summaries show the general activity in the system and break it down by date of transaction into categories for ticket sales (or refunds), donation sales (or refunds) and Gift Certificate sales (or refunds). It should give you a view of where the money went (except those refunds returned in cash to the customer - see last item in this table) Your end of day Journal Entries - You can look at either GL Summaries (which will show the decrease in ticket revenue for an event) or at the GL Detail (since there is a line for refunds to each event).
How much was returned to gift certificates?	On the Gift Certificate patron tab you can see an accurate list of the patrons that have been given the gift certificate for their ticket return. You can use this data to: obtain the amount refunded - since it is simply the total sales value for the certificate for every patron in the list emailing patrons - since you can use the gift certificate data file in conjunction with the gift certificate name to tell patrons that they have one and how to use it - especially if you allow the certificate to be redeemed online building mail lists -and - seeing if patrons are using their gift certificates. What about some sample reports if I don't see the information on the screen? You can have summary or detailed reports about pass/gift certificate usage - there are a number under this category if you created a new liability GL account for your COVID gift certificate, you can look at that to see how much is currently waiting to be redeemed or you can use the Journal Entry Detail by Account to see the change to the Covid account and see when things went in or out of that account
How much was returned to donations?	In the donation campaign donation tab, you can see a list of all donors whose tickets were returned for donations. You can use this data to: obtain the amount refunded to donations - since it is simply the total donation value for every patron in the list emailing patrons - since you can use the donation data file in conjunction with the campaign name to tell patrons that they have one. building mail lists -and - you can thank patrons and batch print receipts or use in thank you form letters if you wish. What about some sample reports if I don't see the information on the screen? You can have summary or detailed reports about donations - there are a number under this category. Some that might be especially interesting might be the donation audit trail reports to see when things happened and if patrons have been thanked with a receipt. if you created a new liability GL account for your COVID donation ticket return campaign, you can look at that to see how much is currently donated Journal Entry Detail by Account to see the change to that account.
How much was returned to cash or credit card?	Very simply, the difference of the Total Ticket Refunds - Total Donations to COVID campaign - Total purchases of COVID Gift Certificates = Total Refunds to Cash and Credit Card. Ultimately accounting reports in your accounting system should tell you the net difference because the data comes changes to your accounts. These can be backed up with the GL reports, the daily sales summaries and the other reports mentioned above.

Finding the total value of tickets refunded

There are a number of ways to find out how much you have refunded to an event. One of the easiest report categories uses the ticket transaction category because it allows you to show details and totals to certain kinds of transactions that happened between a date range.

Some key ones are:

Transaction History By Event - as explained by the youtube video in this page (click to see in youtube) This one is quite relevant since it shows all the refund transactions with the detail who you refunded to
If you are only interested in totals for some events, some of the other transaction based reports might be better suited. Be sure to provide appropriate criteria for the report such as:
- The date range after after which you want to consider transactions - eg all transactions after a certain date
- Only look at the ticket refund transactions

Please read the steps of cancelling an event for more information

If you have refunded some of the tickets to a donation or a gift certificate and want to find out the amount returned to the patron, then:

Find the total refunds as per the transaction reports

Find the total exchanged to a specific donation campaign (for ticket returns in that same date range). You could also use a transaction report for that, but specify new donations to the campaign of choice.

Find the total exchanged to a specific gift certificate type (for ticket returns in that same date range). You could also use a transaction report for that, but specify new passes/gift certificates you used.

The total cash returned to patrons is:
Total tickets returned - total donations purchased (for ticket return) - total gift certificates purchased (for ticket return>
You can get all this from transaction reports.

What if I didn't use Passes or Donations to track Refunds

	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.
	HOWEVER: if you did not: create a custom return Donation Campaign -or- create a custom return Gift Certificates/Pass -or- create a custom G/L account to use with the custom return campaign/pass -or- leave all your refunds on account You can Correct the Data so that you can use some of the key reports to help your analysis using one or more of the methods below.

I just refunded tickets and left the orders on account

If you just left your orders on account when doing tickets refunds, you will have a lot of orders or patrons that show:

in blue on the Receivables Window -or-
negative on the Receivables Report

If you know these to be from refunds to tickets because the age of the receivables is relatively new, on the Receivables Window you can:

Double click on the order that is blue (showing you owe the patron money)
If you are sure this is from a ticket return and there are no other orders with this patron's name on it, refer to refunding to an individual patron and add one of following to take up the balance:

Gift Certificate or Pass
Donation - if the patron indicates that is their intent
Refund the money - if the patron indicates that is their intent.

Safest is to return the money to a gift certificate or pass, since that can be used for tickets and/or refunded to cash/card later. Passes or Gift Certificates can also be set to redeem online, so patrons can buy tickets from you once you are able to open again and use their pass without contacting you.

I didn't use a specific pass and I should have

If you didn't make a new gift certificate or pass to track ticket refunds for COVID, then:

make the appropriate pass/gift certificate to suit your needs.
find the patrons you used the incorrect or hard to track pass for:
- Edit the pass
- Change to your new, easier to track Pass/Gift Certificate Type (make sure its the same redemption type as the old one)

I didn't use a specific donation campaign and I should have

If you didn't make a new donation campaign to track ticket refunds for COVID, then:

make the donation campaign to suit your needs.
find the patrons you used the incorrect or hard to track campaign for:
- Edit the donation
- Change the campaign to your new, easier to track donation campaign.

Theatre Manager: Responding to COVID 19

Where did money get refunded to?