Hello friends,
My name is Chris and I am at Des Moines Performing Arts. We are a presenting organization/performing arts center. We recently had our TMS kick-off call and were made aware of some things we did not know about from our prior meetings with Tessitura about TMS. We are hoping that some of you fine people are at a presenting organization/performing arts center and can help us with these questions.
Here are some of the hurdles we need to overcome:
1. We learned that you cannot do a refund by credit card number, only by CCRef number and using the refund button. While this makes sense, we will also be having quite a few Broadway shows that tickets were sold through WorldPay that we may need to refund and we do not want to issue checks (because of the liability of waiting for guests to cash them and for the customer service that that is not). Have any of you found any ways to overcome this?
2. We learned it is recommended that all returns/refunds/exchanges are done in the original order. We do not currently do this (for a myriad of reason) and trying to wrap our head around how this would affect reporting (as it's already very difficult to report on refunds and exchanges). If you are like us, and have done exchanges, refunds, and returns in a new order, could you share your process for changing to everything in one order and any bumps and hurdles you experienced?
3. We currently have our credit cards setup (for controls and reporting) so that there is credit card payment method for each way to buy (phone, internet, window/in person). We do this because it is a very easy way to do settlements with our presenting organizations, especially touring Broadway. If you also had your credit card setup this way, what hurdles and bumps did you run into for reporting and settlement with this new behavior?
4. We learned that on one-page giving for TNEW, credit cards are not save automagically if the guest is signing up for sustaining giving. Instead, we have to call the guest to get that same credit card to enter into the payment plan that is the sustained giving. Have any of you found ways to overcome this? We don't see this as donor friendly and would definitely be more work for our Devo staff to make sure they call and get those credit cards.
Thank you everyone for any and all answers.
Hi Chris and everyone else! I wanted to provide a quick clarification on refunds.
It is possible to return and exchange tickets paid via Merchant Services in new orders, and in fact we recommend using new orders in most cases. When you start a new order by refunding a ticket (either via the seat map or Return by Ticket Number) and some money needs to be refunded back to the customer, the Refund function will work.
However, once the new order is saved, any further refunds from those tickets cannot be processed using the Refund function (aka Refund Prior Payments or Refund by Reference) in that order. For example, if you returned tickets in a new order, put the balance on the constituent's account, and saved the order, you would not be able to later refund the on account balance with the Refund function in that order. Or, if you exchanged tickets in a new order and saved it, and then later tried to refund the new tickets, you would not be able to refund the balance with the Refund function in that order or another new order.
The link to the original payment only exists in the original order, or when you initially create the new order by returning some tickets. This link is required to use the Refund function. Please let us know if that's not the case for you.
And lastly, let's say that you do have some tickets that were exchanged in a new order and the order was saved, but now you'd like to refund them back to the card from the original order. You can consider the following workaround, in consultation with your finance department. I will admit it's a lot of steps and might not be appropriate for every ticket seller to attempt, but it can be handy when needed.
Hey Michael,
Thank you for taking time to put this down in writing. It helps being able to read it out like this. I think it's all starting to make sense. It's unlearning decades of learned behavior and re-learning new ways to do things.
I'll dig into this and ask any clarifying questions, should there be any.