There was recently a case at another theatre of an employee issuing fraudulent ticket returns and refunds, and we are looking into ways to both: detect if something like this occurs and how to prevent it from happening in the first place. From what we understand, someone was able to refund ticket purchases to a different credit card than was used to purchase the tickets. The refunded card does not have to belong to the constituent - this person used that to refund to their own credit card.
Our first thought was that perhaps there is a way to only allow refunds to the credit cards that purchased the order. There are situations where we would need to change that though, such as with a cancelled card.
The other problem is how to track things like this if they happen. Currently we keep an eye on returned amounts when posting batches, but there is probably a better way of doing that. I’m thinking of writing a report that gives all refunds issued over a period, and which Tessitura user issued them. We might be able to detect concerning patterns that way. My worry is that if someone were to do this in small amounts over a long period of time we might not notice for a while. We also just did a little test and it seems that the mechanics of refunding to another credit card are pretty simple - anyone who has a little experience with Tessitura could probably do it.
Has anyone else heard of something like this happening? Any solutions that people have come up with or would suggest?
I created a custom version of the Performance Transaction Detail report that would just highlight any refunds for the Box Office managers, along with who completed them and any order notes so they could monitor any refunds happening easily.
Thank you all for your ideas. It sounds like this will have to be solved through internal processes where we have to have a designated way of checking any refunds. Caryl, would you mind sharing your custom report so we can adapt it to our purposes? And I'm guessing there is no way to make Tessitura force refunds to credit card on the original transaction?