Processing a Shipping Refund after Original Cancellation
This topic describes how to process a shipping refund after a cancellation order has already been processed.
Consider this example:
- An order is accidentally created for a customer for a 12 ounce mug, which costs $12.00. The order includes a $5.00 shipping charge. The customer's credit card is charged $17.00.
- A Customer Service representative cancels this incorrect order with the Order Cancellation wizard. However, the user forgets to select the Refund Shipping Charge option. The order is cancelled and refund is processed, but the customer's credit card is only credited $12.00, not $17.00.
- The customer calls asking for the additional $5.00 refund. Since the original order has already been canceled, you cannot run the Order Cancellation wizard to process the shipping refund.
Perform the steps below to refund the shipping charges.
Setting Up a Shipping Refund Product
This section describes a one-time product setup to create a placeholder product that you can use for the purpose of generating a shipping refund. Follow these steps:
- Open a new Products record in Aptify. This will be a placeholder product for an order that refunds shipping charges.
- Enter values in the Name and Category fields.
- Select the Include In Shipping Calc. option.
- Do not enter any price. This will be a $0.00 placeholder product.
- Save and close the Products record.
Refunding Only the Shipping Charges
Perform the steps in the following procedures to refund an order's shipping charges:
Creating the Shipping Cancellation Order
Follow the steps below to create a cancellation order for shipping charges:
- Open the original order that the shipping charges you want to refund.
- Click the Cancellations tab and open a new Order from the Cancellation Linked to This Order view by clicking the New icon circled below:
- Enter the appropriate Ship To/Bill To information to match the original order.
- In the Lines area, add the Shipping Refund placeholder product you defined earlier.
- Since this product is subject to shipping calculations, the order will add the Shipping/Handling charges it calculates for the order. These are positive shipping charges so you will need to modify that manually. Click one of the information icons to the right of the Shipping and Handling fields to open the Shipping/Handling Details dialog.
- In the Shipping/Handling Details dialog, double-click to open the Order Shipments record.
- Manually modify the values in the Shipping Charge, Shipping Cost, and Handling Charge fields to match the amounts you want to refund. In this example, the Shipping and Handling charges are reversed and the Shipping Cost charge is cleared out. If the shipment never went out, you can also reverse the Shipping Cost. However, if a shipment went out (and the organization paid for shipping), you would leave the Shipping Cost at $0.00.
- Click OK to save the modified shipping charges.
- Click OK again to close the Shipping/Handling Details dialog.
- Review the order. Notice that:
- The Order Type has automatically changed to Cancellation.
- The Original Order ID is already populated on the Cancellations tab. This was populated when you opened the new order from the original order's Cancellations view.
- The Balance is now a credit amount for the amount of the shipping refund.
- Modify the Payment Type as necessary. For a check returned to the customer, you can select a Refund Voucher payment type (and you will not need to create a separate refund payment later). If refunding to a credit card or keeping the credit on account, change the value in the Payment Type field to Purchase Order and enter a relevant PO Number.
Click the Messages tab, click the Comments sub-tab,, and enter any additional information you want to track concerning this order for future reference. Also, you can select the Suppress Confirmation Emails option to not send an automated email to the customer.
This assumes that your system would normally send out an email notice for this type of order and that your system respects the Suppress Confirmation Email setting. This setting was added in Aptify 5.5.1.
Save and ship the Order.
- Confirm that the appropriate GL Entries were generated. This order's GL entries should reverse the corresponding Shipping GL entries on the original order.
- If you did not create a Refund Voucher payment at order save, then the order has a credit balance and it can be used as a credit memo. Alternatively, you can process a separate refund payment for this order, as described in the next section.
Refunding the Shipping Charges
After creating a cancellation order that refunds the shipping charges, you can refund the shipping charges. Choose one of the two methods available to do this:
- Refunding the Shipping Charges with the Payment Refund Wizard
- Refunding the Shipping Charges Manually
If you are running Aptify 5.5.1, you can use the Payment Refund wizard to generate the refund for you. Refer to the Refunding the Shipping Charges with the Payment Refund Wizard section. T
Refunding the Shipping Charges with the Payment Refund Wizard
As of Aptify 5.5.1, you can use the Payment Refund wizard to refund shipping charges. The Payment Refund wizard supports all payment types, including credit cards that require the original transaction ID to process the credit request. If you do not have the Payment Refund wizard, see the Refunding the Shipping Charges Manually section.
After creating a cancellation order that refunds the shipping charges, follow these steps if you want to generate a refund payment to the customer.
- Open the original Payment record that was used to pay for the shipping charges from the original order.
- Click the Details tab and click the Refund This Payment button.
- The Payment Refund wizard opens and pre-populates the Payment field with the value from the original payment. Click Next to continue.
- In Step 2, review the orders to which you can apply the refund. In this case, you want to locate the order that has the Shipping Refund product, like the one circled in the example below.
- In the Refund Allocated column, enter the refund amount to balance out the Shipping Refund order credit.
- Enter any relevant comments in the Refund Payment Comments area.
- Click Finish and follow the on-screen instructions to create the refund payment.
Verify that the refund payment details are correct and that the GL entries dealing with shipping charges from the original payment have been reversed:
- Close the wizard and any open record.
Refunding the Shipping Charges Manually
If you do not have the Payment Refund wizard, you will need to create a refund payment manually. See Creating a Refund for instructions.
Note that if you are refunding to a credit card, you will not be able to process the PayPal refund directly from Aptify (since the refund requires the original transaction ID, which you cannot enter manually from the Payments form). In this case, you first process the refund manually in PayPal's virtual terminal and then record that refund as a Payment in Aptify (using a Payment type that does not integrate with the Merchant Account – for example, you can create a Refund Voucher-based "Manual Credit Card Refund" payment type to handle recording these types of transactions).
Follow these steps to process the refund in PayPal:
- Login to http://manager.paypal.com
- Select the Virtual Terminal menu.
- Select the Single Transaction option.
- Enter Credit as the Transaction Type and enter the original transaction ID (from the original payment capture – this information is available in the Capture record within the original Payment's Authorization tab or directly in PayPal by reviewing the transaction history).
After you have generated the refund out of PayPal, record this transaction within Aptify by creating a manual refund payment to balance out the credit order using the Manual Credit Card Refund payment type (and not the original credit card payment type).
This should reverse the GL entries on the original payment and hit whatever refund account/cash account that is required.
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