Refunds update

The difference between the 'Refunds' update and the 'Refund preview' report

The 'Refund preview' report shows you what refunds would be automatically issued if you were to run the 'Refunds' update. Therefore, you run the 'Refund preview' report to check the validity of your refunds before running the actual refund update. (Click here for more information on the 'Refund preview' report.)

The filters for the 'Refunds' update and the 'Refund preview' report look exactly the same.

What it does

The 'Refunds' update produces a list of subscriptions that are to receive refunds. It also changes each subscription's order record to show that a refund has been issued.

It's important to understand the difference between the refund transaction, the refund preview, and the refund update.

When you select 'Refund' under 'Transactions' on the main menu, QuickFill simply records the fact that you should refund a portion of an order's total payments to the customer. That is, it increases the amounts in both the 'Refund' field and the 'Refund due' field of the customer's order record by the amount of the refund. It also increases the amount due for the order by the same amount.

The 'Refund preview', which you select under 'Reports' on the main menu, lists all orders that have a nonzero amount in the 'Refund due' field. This preview serves two purposes. First, you can see whether you have enough potential refunds to warrant writing refund checks or issuing charge card credit vouchers. Second, you can look at each subscription to verify that the refund is correct before you actually issue it.

The 'Refunds' update lists the same orders as the 'Refund preview'—that is, all orders that have a nonzero amount in the 'Refund due' field. But it goes further than the 'Refund preview'. It also places zeros in the 'Refund due' fields. The update doesn't write your refund checks or create charge card credit vouchers. You use the information on the report to create these checks or vouchers.

When to run it

You can run the 'Refunds' update as often as you think necessary.

How to run it

Follow these steps when you run the 'Refunds' update.

Step 1

First run the 'Refund preview' under 'Reports' on the main menu and check that all the potential refunds are correct. If they're not, make any corrections necessary.

Step 2

You may also want to run the 'Credit balance' report under 'Reports' on the main menu, then process any refund transactions you want to make (by again selecting 'Refund' under 'Transactions' on the main menu).

Step 3

Make a backup of your database. If the 'Refunds' update fails to run to completion, you cannot restart it. You must restore your database and start the update again. So it's extremely important that you make a backup before running the update.

Step 4

Select 'Refunds' under 'Updates' on the main menu and fill in the blanks on the screen you see.

Company name

QuickFill prints the name you enter in this field on the report generated by the update.

Publications to be processed

Choose the publications for which you want to run the credit card forms update by double clicking on the publication name or clicking in the checkbox for the publication(s) you want to include. An "x" will appear in the box in front of the publication name. Click on "Select All" to select all publications.

Step 5

Before the update begins to run, you'll see a warning message. This message lets you know that you must restore your database from a backup if the update fails to run to completion. It then asks if you have an up-to-date backup of your database. Choose "No," and QuickFill returns you to the 'Updates' menu. Choose "Yes," and the update will begin to run. Clearly, we want to emphasize that it's extremely important to make backups of your database regularly. Please take the time to make them.

You can follow the update's progress with the box that pops up on the screen while the update is running. QuickFill executes the 'Refunds' update in three steps.

  1. It examines all the subscriptions to the publication to see which ones are due refunds.

  2. It sorts these subscriptions into the proper order.

  3. It puts zeros in the 'Refund due' fields of the appropriate orders and creates the report.

Once the update is through running, you can select 'Print…' under 'Reports' on the main menu to print (or view on the screen) the refund reports.

What it produces

QuickFill produces a refund update report for all subscriptions for which at least one of the following is true:

  1. The subscription has an order with an unprocessed refund amount.

  2. Your publication policy is to refund a credit balance automatically, and the subscription has an order with a credit balance greater than the minimum refund amount.

QuickFill sorts the data in the refund report by:

  1. publication;

  2. payment type—check, Visa, and so forth—of the last order that had a payment;

  3. bill-to customer's country code;

  4. bill-to customer's zip code.

  5. company;

  6. individual's last name,and

  7. first line of street address.

The refund update report lists all orders for the subscriptions it selects. It shows the following information for each order:

  1. order number;

  2. order date;

  3. last payment date;

  4. credit card number and expiration date;

  5. balance due before any write-offs;

  6. all write-offs, and

  7. all refunds to date—including all refunds processed on this update run.

The report also lists the following if it is relevant to the order:

  1. The word "AUTO" next to the 'Refund due now' field. If you see "AUTO," you'll know that QuickFill automatically refunded a credit balance greater than the minimum refund amount you specified for the publication

(click here for details on the publication definition billing tab ).

  1. The agency code and name, if the order came from an agency.

  2. The payment type, if it differed from the payment type for the last order that had a payment. This means you can identify credit card payments, even though the customer made a more recent payment for a subsequent order. Identifying credit card payments is useful, because you may want to issue a charge card credit voucher rather than a check. If the customer made more than one payment of different types on the same order, you cannot distinguish the type of the earlier payment on this report. You have to look at the subscription history for the customer by using 'Lookup' under 'Transactions' on the main menu.

  3. The unprocessed credit card amount if an unprocessed credit card amount also exists for the order. You can reverse the credit card payment (by selecting 'Bounced payment' under 'Transactions' on the main menu) rather than issue a refund check. (If you do this, you should also add a comment to the subscription history, indicating that you used the transaction to fix an error; you didn't use it because the bank refused the credit card payment.)

Remember: The report lists all orders for a subscription—not just those with a refund due. Why? Maybe, for example, an overpayment in one order should not result in a refund. Instead, you should transfer the amount to a previous order, where an underpayment had previously been written off.

 

See Also