Cancellation via API - Can it be done?

Hi Menno,

Are you talking about returning and refunding an order through the client, TNEW or the API?

There's not a "cancel order" button, per se.  Many if not most Tessitura-using orgs tend to be very limited in their refund offerings.  We allow exchanges to subscribers, and have only recently been offering refunds at all beyond show cancellations.  Also, every organization is likely to have a different idea about what exactly a refund should entail (e.g. one lineitem, the whole order?  Are fees refunded?  If so, which ones?).  You notice I'm talking about refunds, not cancellation.  A standard ticket order in Tessitura is not a process that can be interrupted.  You push the button, your money is transferred, and your reservation is set.  There's no time period wherein the fulfillment of your order is yet to occur after placement, even if you are distributing physical tickets, they are merely tokens of the reservation you already have.

Since there's no agreed-upon method for how refunds are processed, they are necessarily manual: seats must be released, fees must be overridden, and finally a new payment action applied to the new balance, which typically is going to involve sending a new request to the payment processor which includes a reference number from the original payment..  This is handled by multiple separate steps in the client.  There is no built-in system in TNEW.  The API...if you're looking for a process there I'll have to refer you someone else I'm afraid.  If you are doing a lot of Tessitura API work, you should look into getting an account on the developer's slack channel as well (although this is also a perfectly good place to ask questions).

Menno,

I feel your pain here. I am also a vendor working on an application for a Tessitura venues and finding information can be a huge problem.

I think the answer here is that you have to log into the dashboard of the payment provider that they are currently using. This may be WindCave or WorldPay. It could possibly be Tessitura Merchant Services if they were setup very recently. 

You should be able to process refunds directly on the payment providers there.

This does not however answer your question about voiding the received tickets via the API however. I wish I could direct you to a more direct answer, but we're currently in the process of trying to implement payment processors in our clients new custom application at the moment and will be running into the same question.

You should always process refunds through Tessitura.  If you are doing it manually you can easily do this as part of the order update that releases the seats in question.  I know that you can release seats and transfer money via the API, as many people have built ticket exchange tools using the API.  These rely on money being placed "On Account" for the customer.

Processing refunds via customer initiation (if that's the goal) is fundamentally trickier: if they paid by card, do you still have the card token or order reference number?  And using the former has all sort of security considerations (many Tessitura systems are configured to not let you do anything but refund by reference).  If you don't have that number?  Or they paid by cash?

Not sure this is what you're after but we have a custom site based on an API intregration and this is how we do when we let the customer return their tickets and recieve on account credits to use for other purchases:

1. Make sure the user is logged in and that the cart is empty
2. Call POST Web/Cart/{sessionKey}/Tickets/Return for each ticket to return
3. Add the sum returned as on account credits to the customers account using POST Web/Cart/{sessionKey}/OnAccount
4. Call POST Web/Cart/{sessionKey}/Checkout to finish the transaction

Then to use the money, make sure the user is logged in and call POST Web/Cart/{sessionKey}/Payments/OnAccount to use the on account credits as part of the payment for another order.

But there really should be an expert from Tessitura and the specific implementation to guide you through how to implement this, if this is what you're after.

Regards
Fredrik

Thanks a lot Fredrik!

This is indeed an approach I had heard before but I refused to believe that this was the only way.
But judging by the input from the others in this thread I'm afraid it's really not possible to simply void a purchase that was created via the API (and paid on invoice basis)

Dealing with credit seems like a non-transparent hassle to deal with.

Appreciate the input!
Hope it helps others too.

With kind regards,

Menno

Thanks for the sympathy Michael 

And for the answer.

It's not a matter of returning the money. 
In this case it's about "wiping out" the order. There's no actual financial transaction involved

Thanks for your answer and time Gawain!
However, it's not about financial transactions. See my response to Redrik for more background.

Hi Menno - 

I'm glad you got the answer, even if it was not what you expected. Tessitura does not allow cancellation of orders completely in either the application or API, especially once there is any transactional history attached to the order such as an invoice or payment. We do allow returns as Fredrik so helpfully outlined.

I wanted to make sure to emphasize a few resources scattered throughout this thread as well.

- Our getting started page which lists all of these resources below

- API documentation - obviously you are using this, but putting it here for completeness

- Developer Slack Workspace - this is a great place with a lot of smart people who have been using the API for a while to do amazing things. It's all developers all the time.

- Shared Code Repository – Stumped for a solution?  Interested to see how others have solved similar problems? Take a peek at projects other developers have chosen to share in our community shared code repository.  

- We also offer API consulting via our professional services team. If you are building out a productized-API integration which spans across multiple integrations, it might be good to invest in a bit of expert help to get to the bottom of some of the best practices and how-tos from Tessitura itself, vs having to rely on a variety of differing opinions from multiple organization voices.

Best of luck with your development,

Heather