In this video, we will explain to you how to refund a booking.
Transcript
Hi! In this video, I will show you how to make a refund.
Refund Permissions
Before I start, it's important to talk about the user permissions. There are four possible permission levels for refunds, which you can find under Configuration, then Users. Once you have the user that you would like to edit, click the Edit icon and go to Permissions on the main setup. Once you are there, scroll down to the Area Access and Permissions. You can find more detailed information about these permissions in the refunds article.
Making a Refund
In this video, I will focus only on how to make a refund. So let's start. Do not forget that if the customer is still in the tour or has already taken the tour, leave the booking in Confirmed status. If they don't want to take the tour anymore, then cancel the booking first. Your command is to ensure that your operational reports are accurate.
So you first need to go to the booking you would like to make a refund for. For that, go to Bookings, click again on Bookings. Once you have it, click on the eye icon here. Once you are there, go to the Money tab, and on the right side, the Balance Status. You have a link about the user permissions, and also the steps that you need to take for a refund in different situations.
If you want to make a refund to the credit card, then click here on Refund and the Credit Card. This option will only appear if there has been a credit card payment. However, there is an exception for payments done on Trust My Travel platform, which cannot be refunded via Tour CMS and should be done by email through Trust My Travel. These are normally payments made prior to the end of March 2021 and can be identified as "Spridley PMT" in the payment type.
If, on the other hand, you would like to make a manual refund, then click on New Payment or Refund and then Manually Add a Payment. Click on it, and here it is very important that you introduce a negative amount. In our case, it's -149 Euro. And then complete the rest of the information, such as the date, payment value, payment type, etc., and click on New Payment. It is called like this only for informational purposes, even though it's not connected to your payment system.
Once you do this, you will see here a second row showing the payment, which is shown with a negative amount. For confirmed bookings, don't forget to change the balance status to Refunded, which you can do here. Click Refunded and Save. As you can see, now the balance is again zero. And if you skip this step, by this type of change in the balance status is refunded, it will appear that the customer owes you money, and actually they don't. For bookings that are cancelled, the balance outstanding automatically reduces to zero. And if you don't want this to happen, change the setup in Configuration, System and Setup, and then Booking General Settings. Scroll down to Deposit and Balance Payments here, and then go to the Cancelled Bookings. You can change the setting here.
Different Refund Scenarios
Okay, so now I am going to explain different situations.
Scenario 1: Partial Refund (Customer unhappy with the tour)
Imagine that the customer was unhappy with the tour, so you would like to refund only part of the total payment. In this case, leave the booking as Confirmed as well (assuming that they paid already). Make a refund equal to the value you paid. Go to New Payment, and I would like to give 145 Euros. Click on New Payment, and here you also need to change the status to Refunded. You need to change the status to Refunded because otherwise it will look like they still owe you money, and they actually don't. And you see here that the end balance is zero again.
Scenario 2: Customer cancellation
Another situation is when a customer decides not to take the tour anymore. In this case, you need to cancel the booking first. You can see here under the status of the booking, in a dropdown menu, choose the reason for the cancellation, in this case, for example, "Cancelled by customer request." And then you will need to pay some value back, but this depends on your cancellation terms. Some companies do only partial refunds when the customer cancels a booking, and it is exactly the same process as manually editing a New Payment and changing the balance status to Refunded.
Scenario 3: Tour operator cancellation
If, on the other hand, it was a tour operator who cancelled the tour, then also cancel the booking first, for example, because of the bad weather. Don't forget to update this status. And then make a refund equal to the value you paid. Generally, tour operators refund the full value, and here again, this depends on your cancellation terms. The process is exactly the same: add the refund with a negative amount and change the balance status to Refunded. And click here.
Scenario 4: Complimentary tour
Lastly, it may happen that the customer is receiving a free tour, or in other words, a complimentary tour. In this case, leave the booking as Confirmed, but what you need to do is edit the sales price to zero. You do that by going to Products and then the right side under the Actions column, going to Sales Price and Quantity. Scroll down a bit and in the sales price field, change to zero. And don't forget to Save Changes. You only need to add a refund if the customer already had a payment added to the booking. There is also an alternative for complementary tours where you can use a promo code that applies a 100% discounts. In this case, you wouldn't have to go through the steps I told you about changing the sales price.