We transitioned to Adyen in July 2023, and have been disappointed with the company thus far. In addition to sub-par reporting, Adyen imposes significant limitations on refund capabilities, with a cap of $5000, unless you pre-fund the amounts to your Adyen account. This cumbersome workaround process undermines the core benefits of engaging a merchant services provider.
This limitation highlights a critical need for adaptability managing refunds, particularly in light of the challenges posed by performance cancellations and other unpredictable circumstances. If we need to cancel an event due to weather or other unforeseen circumstances, we cannot wait 2-3 days to begin processing refunds because Adyen won't allow it unless the full amount is in our Adyen account. I am so grateful Adyen was not our processor during 2020 or 2021 because it would have been untenable. The lack of flexibility in Adyen's current setup prompts a reassessment of our approach to merchant services. Tessitura is aware of the issue and the challenges with Adyen. If you haven't made the switch to Tessitura Merchant Services, I would strongly recommend that you pause until the issues are addressed with the payment processor. Moreover, should there be an absence of significant improvement in service adaptability and responsiveness from Adyen, it would be prudent for Tessitura to reconsider its requirement that all organizations make the shift to Adyen. Allowing organizations the autonomy to select their merchant services provider would enable the selection of entities that are not only more aligned with their operational needs but also adhere to industry best practices.
Tessitura Network is aware that some organizations (including Kennedy Center) cannot go live with Adyen as is, and probably never will be able to. That's why they extended the contract with Worldpay until next year.
I'm hoping we hear something at TLCC this year about what other options they are pursuing.
We’re going to have to switch back if they don’t get this fixed. Unfortunately, we were an early adopter and they weren’t ready for our volume.
Hi Heather
I am so grateful that you made this post as we are looking to convert over.
So when you say the cap of 5,000.00, does that mean a single transaction, daily, weekly amount or a total cap. So what would you do if you have to refund a cancelled show? I am also thinking on how we would process e refund of deposits that we have collected in the beginning of a school year and then had to refund at the end of the year.
Taking this a bit further, what if the system double charged a patron in error, what would you do. Tell the patron they have to wait for the refund until we fund our account. I don't think so.
Again, thanks for posting this. Are there any other issues that you have seen?
Thanks
Debbie Wallin
Royal Winnipeg Ballet
The term cap is actually incorrect. The term Tessitura uses is reserve and describes the process a bit better. While this could create issues for refunding large sets of transactions, it would depend on the available funds from "in process" transactions.
We ran into this issue when we attempted to refund a large donation that had accidentally been processed twice by one of our development staff. The in process funds and refund reserve were below the amount we were attempting to refund (this was a five figure refund, so well over $5,000). Because the in process funds and the reserve were below the amount of the refund, it was not processed. Had we increased our refund reserve (which we are considering doing on a sustained basis) we wouldn't have run into the issue.
In the end we issued a check to the donor and, fortunately they were okay with it.
It does pose a bit of a challenge for those that may have to refund a cancelled performance, because the amount being refunded would need to be available within the in process funds plus the refund reserve. If it was short, there is a process to "top up" the funds to allow the refunds to process. Not ideal, but workable and hopefully not something that occurs often.
I'm sort of on an Ideas Board kick right now, and Heather, you're not the only one. Just mentioning that someone else is asking Tessitura to allow choice in Merchant Services here: https://community.tessitura.com/ideas/i/ideas/adyen-merchant-needs-to-be-more-flexible-with-refunds-or-a-larger-number-of-options-for-a-merchant-services-provider-need-to-be-availabl (disclosure, it's not me, and we are not on TMS, but like Shelly, these limitations will be a big factor in moving)
I want to thank Phillip Parks for chiming in. He succinctly explained the refund details. Granted my org isn't the largest org, but I'm not understanding some of the hair on fire comments here. If you have less money in your account than the amount you are trying to access, then any banking institution is going to prevent the transaction(s) from going through. In early 2020, our CFO wouldn't let us process all of our refunds at one time. We had to process them in batches over several days. None of this feels very different than that experience. And hopefully we won't be cancelling entire productions any time soon. We were an early adopter of TMS and have been very happy with the decision. It has been so much better than any experience we ever had with WorldPay.While I don't disagree that members should be given the opportunity to select their payment processor from a short list. I also don't think that TMS is as problematic as some of you seem to fear.
I guess it depends on your operations. From my perspective, it is a cap because I prefer gross revenue, versus the net that they deposit. My finance team is also really unhappy with the Adyen reporting as month end reconciliations are more cumbersome.
Also, I have never in 20 years of overseeing finance departments (at Arts institutions) had to put money on reserve with a merchant services provider. It's just not how it typically happens. The benefit of having a provider is revenue comes directly into your bank account, and expenses come directly out. I suspect this crazy set up is because Adyen is not a US based provider.
At the end of the day, it comes down to - we should have the right to choose our own provider, and not be forced to use Adyen.
It does come down to choice. I'd prefer to keep our funds in our own bank account and have them drawn from there. But each institution is different. And it may be that TMS can't keep up with our size.
Dana, we were early adopters too of TMS. I believe we will have been on it for 2 years this summer. Growing pains? Yes. But overall, we are Ok with it now.
New or moving to TMS: feel free to reach out if I can help answer any questions. jbonanno@mccarter.org.
Thanks Heather for bringing up this topic. First a small clarification: as others point out here, it isn't a fixed amount of $5,000 available for refunds but rather a $5,000 automatic float which allows you to refund that amount plus whatever income is processed on an individual day. Obviously as you point out this can impact situations where there are sudden performance cancellations, but over the two years we have only seen this impact day to day processing in two or three instances, one of which was obviously your situation. As you said, we are aware of the issue and are working on a longer term solution with Adyen to make this process smoother.