Refund Batching
Because we're not able to support refunding directly back onto a member's card, we've instead built some functionality that makes refunding via EFT a whole lot easier.
This article gives an overview of how it all works.
Prerequisites
For those who are familiar with issuing refunds in Majestri, you'll know that it's a two-step process. The batching of refunds works by looking at all outstanding refunds in the system. This means that you must still do the raising of a refund on a registration/order in the first instance.
If you are unsure what this means, then please take the time to read up on refunding in Majestri first:
Additionally, because we built this functionality for clubs who use our credit card processing, it is only available to clubs who have credit card processing enabled.
Lastly, this function is only really useful if your club has (or is planning to acquire) a bulk payment facility from your bank. Essentially, the facility allows the uploading of an ABA (Australian Banker's Association) file which contains a set of payments that you'd like to disburse from the club bank account. The entire purpose of the Refund Batching module is to generate this file, so it's not all that useful if you can't do anything with that file. Please contact your bank if you would like to know more about this facility.
Plugging in your APCA User Id
If you're reading this, then your club already has a facility for uploading an ABA file to your Internet banking facility to do a bulk payment disbursement.
When you signed up for this facility, you would have been issued with an APCA User ID. This ID is printed onto every ABA file and is mandatory. To start using Refund Batching, you must enter it in with the rest of your financial settings. For a rundown on entering core financial settings into Majestri, please visit:
Creating a Batch
When you select any of the checkboxes to the left of a refundee, the fly-up from the bottom has the option to add that refund to a new batch (if there is an existing batch it will instead give the option to add to the current batch).
If this is the first refund into the batch, we create the batch in the background. While in this state, a batch can be accessed and added to at any time (until the ABA file is generated and uploaded - see below).
As part of the refinement of this functionality, we wanted to introduce a more streamlined process around collecting bank account details from members. Therefore, we only allow batching of refund payments to members where their bank account details have been recorded and verified within the last 12 months. For a greater understanding of collecting bank account details from members, please visit:
If you've already been through the process of collecting bank account details from your members (or been updating them yourself), then you will be able to batching up refunds.
The next 4 steps in the sections below show how to take a refund batch through to completion, and can be repeated for each batch that you do.
Step 1 - Generating the ABA File
Once you've got a set of refunds to process and you're happy to make the payments, simply click the Generate ABA File, shown below:
The generation of this file can occur as many times as you like. You can keep adding/removing outstanding refunds and repeatedly generate this file.
Step 2 - Uploading the ABA File
Once you've generated the ABA file and it's final, then you go through the process of uploading it to your Internet banking facility.
After this has done, then you want to virtually rule a line through the batch to show that it has been finalised. Click the Mark as Uploaded button to do so.
This batch can no longer be changed in any way - it is locked.
Step 3 - Handling failed payments
We know from the experience of Payment Plans that your members will be absolutely terrible at entering their bank account details correctly. We're hoping they'll be more careful when accepting refunds as they're receiving money instead of it being debited from their account.
However you receive word from your bank that a payment failed, you can update the corresponding entry in your refund batch to indicate that it failed.
When failing the payment, you'll be given the option to provide a reason as to why it failed. This will be useful so take the time to give as much detail as possible.
Step 4 - Finalising the Batch
The remaining payments (ie. ones that cleared successfully) can now be finalised. Simply click the Finalise Batch button shown below).
For each refund being closed off, the system will create the refund payment and allocate it to the raised refund. The end result is identical in every way to doing this process manually in the system. The real saving is having them done all in one fell swoop in this fashion.
Once that's all done, then you can pretty much return to the Creating a Batch step above and start over.
Refund Batch History
As with everything in the system, we like to record everything for posterity.
You can see a full history of all processed refund batches in the system by clicking the button highlighted below:
FAQ
Frequent questions that we get on Refund Batch functionality can be found with the questions we get around refunding in general: