Multiple refunds

@Laura Taylor
It definitely causes issues for us too. We see the repercussions of partial refunds all the way through our accounting process. It became too much a few years ago and I created a kind of complicated process, but one that's making a huge difference in everything from ease of understanding past actions to our reporting and accounting.

We handle partial refunds differently depending on the situation. I'm in the development department so I'm only dealing with orders which involve our department somehow. I do have less information on how other departments are handling this. For our department, we split these into three categories:

1. Treat the partial as an exchange transaction if:
- It's a mix of development revenue (i.e. gift & membership)
- It's a large gift that needs a partial refund
- It's a gift that needs to be split
- AND, it's any payment type but online cc

For this scenario, we:
- Refund the whole gift using the payment type on the transaction.
- On the original payment type, most frequently our in house cc processor, we refund only the portion that needs to be refunded.
- We process a second transaction with the corrected amounts and items using the original payment type.

2. We do partial refunds only if:
- It's an online cc order
- Funds from another department exist on the transaction that should not be refunded, but could cause registration issues if we refund and recharge

In this scenario we simply process the partial directly to the online cc or in Altru then in the other payment type and hope they never want another refund.

3. Special handling situations for us include:
- Previous partial refunds (since requiring refunds / recharges in most cases, these have dwindled significantly, it's the best!
- Any refund which no longer has it's original payment type (if someone does a full exchange, we use a special payment type for that, which disrupts this process.

For these scenarios, staff are requested to work with me directly to ensure we process things fully. Some steps that require special logins and access, that I have to do and we have extra steps because of our connection to the University. We have an excel spreadsheet to track these, since future refunds will not be visible in Altru.

The process for an additional refund on a partially refunded order looks something like this:
- Enter the details of the refund in our tracking sheet (we also use this for back office/recurring refunds).
- Process the refund in the payment type software (most frequently online cc).
- Send update requests to the University of Utah to update gift receipts and transfer money back to us.
- Make a note on the gift and the donors account in Altru.

For previously exchanged items, we usually just change the refund payment type back from exchange, to ensure it matches for our accountant.

This is a lot of information! To help my team I have a little flow chart that helps them suss out the situation, as it's more complicated then it has a right to be, haha. But I am not mad at the drop in partial refunds.

Chrissy