We're still a bit new to Tessitura and we have an entirely new finance department. I'll be posting a few other finance related questions but here's the first! I've seen the use of a refund GL and Pay Method for all refunds discussed here.
We confuse finance when we have, $500 in checks and a $200 "refund" that was actual correction to an incorrect payment method, thus debiting the $200 from the checking account (we use one GL for checks and cash pay methods).
I bring the posting to finance and while they physically have $500 in checks, the GL says they only have $300 so you can imagine the frustration. In this case, nothing ever matches.
I've set up a Refund GL and Pay Method so associates would not refund to the same pay method but actually to the specific refund GL so that would stop pulling funds from the cash GL.
However, how does this then affect actual ticket sales when we have a refund of actual tickets? I need to be sure that deferred revenue is being removed from that performance and whatever pay method previously used. If I use the refund pay method that won't happen.
Is this best practice? Also, is there documentation or webinars that delve further into the finance side of Tessitura? We inherited an odd GL setup, do not reconcile daily tickets or fees, everything is posted to the financial software from the GL in one lump sum batch and I'm seeing it's problematic but need to be able to direct our finance folks to more information.
Thank you!
Hi Michelle,
First and foremost...welcome to The Network. :)
I fully understand the frustration that can come from Finance regarding how things work in Tessitura. Unfortunately, Tessitura is not a perfect accounting software. As far as your posting report and $500 in physical checks but only $300 on the posting, that is because Tessitura does divide payments and refunds into two columns on the posting report. They should be able to see that although the grand total says $300, you did in fact take in $500 in checks. At a former employer, when we had a refund by check, we had to fill out a refund request slip so that Finance had a paper trail of the refund request. I've been at other organizations that don't do this. It's always different depending on the accounting practices of the CFO. If you print out a detailed batch posting report, it should show finance exactly what happened where.
As to your question about how this affects actual ticket sales, once you return a seat, that revenue is subtracted automatically from the performance. The refund payment method has nothing to do with the actual ticket revenue other then it is the way you are paying the order to zero. I would imagine you have GL's for each performance and possibly each price type so those again, don't touch the GL's for payments. A way to make sure this is working correctly is to pull whatever reports you use for daily sales and see if the sales total went down by the refunded ticket amount. I would also suggest that you suggest to your Finance team that daily or weekly reconciliation will make everyone's life a lot easier. It's easier to find a mistake that's only a week old versus a month or two old.
As for training, there aren't any specific webinars that I could find. There is a forum for Finance users that I would suggest you get your Finance team to become part of and post questions to. There's also the help menu directly from the Tessitura application as well. Quite honestly, the forums are great for finding best practices. I'd also suggest that your Finance team at least watch how performances are set up and even do some ticket sales and such so they understand what you do for tickets sales. I'd also suggest they sit with your Devo team to see how they process gifts and memberships.
Hopefully that helps a little and gets you moving in some different directions.
Best,
Christopher Cuhel
The 5th Avenue Theatre