Topics Covered:
[0:17] - The Orders Tab
[0:25] - Where to perform an Exchange, Refund, and Void
[0:33] - Exchanges
[2:19] - Refunds
[3:31] - Refund $ but not the seats
[3:54] - Return seats but not the $
[4:16] - Convert to Donation
[4:35] - Refund to Gift Card
[4:49] - Batch Refund
[5:28] - Void an Order
Ticket Order Changes Video Transcription:
Hello and welcome! Today I am going to walk you through processing exchanges among events, performing money transfers, voids or refunds on orders, and how all of these interactions affect your ticket and seat inventory.
To begin, we’ll need to login and find the order. This can be found using our search tools under the Orders menu. Perform your search to view results and then Click on the Order ID number to access their order. Look down here on the right. We can initiate exchanges, refunds, voids, and even convert the order to a donation with a click.
At times, plans change and your patrons won’t be able to attend a performance and need to transfer their tickets to another date. If you need to perform an exchange on behalf of your customer, click here. Under “quantity” select the number of tickets you would like to exchange. You can also click “select all” to exchange all of the tickets in this order. Check your information and click “select new tickets”. That will bring us to the events page where we will choose the new event. Click “manage” on the desired event, select the date and time of the event they wish to attend, and for reserved seating, select the desired section and seats. Then click continue, choose the appropriate ticket types based on the original order, and hit continue one last time.
We will automatically bring over the customer’s name and billing information into the new order. Take a look at the new total of this transaction. If you offer exchanges as an included service at no charge, you’ll want to "waive the fees" since the customer will have already paid the fees on the original order. If it’s not an even exchange and the new order is greater in cost than the original order, the patron will need to pay the difference. Enter in any payment information here, and click “confirm order” to complete. If the new order is lower in cost than the original order, no payment will be due, so you simply have to click confirm order. A pop up will appear allowing you to automatically refund the remaining balance.
This will automatically return the original tickets and applicable seats back into inventory for the original performance so they can be repurchased. Additionally, both exchanging and refunding the seats will invalidate any associated barcodes from the original tickets so that the tickets cannot be scanned.
Let’s cover the refund process. Click on “Initiate Refund.” If you want to refund all of the tickets for this order, simply click “Refund All” over here. Notice that all tickets are selected and the full value of those tickets are updated automatically. Otherwise, you may manually enter in the amount of tickets you wish to refund under “Quantity”. Confirm that you want to refund the full value of each ticket selected. If your policy is to give only partial refunds, you can manually enter in the amount you would like to refund here under “Refund Amount”. This checkbox dictates whether or not you would like to refund any fees applied to the order. And here you can optionally enter in a reason for the refund for your records. Once ready, click here on “Process Refund”. This will automatically return the tickets and applicable seats back into your inventory, enabling them to be repurchased. Also it’s important to note that processing a refund for an order paid by credit card will return the money back to the customer’s credit card right from within ThunderTix so there is no need to login to your payment gateway to handle refunds separately. In fact, for accurate reporting, you should perform all refunds in this manner.
At times, customers may request a refund whether they were dissatisfied with the event or unable to attend. There are two types of refunds. Let’s click on the “Initiate Refund” button. If you want to refund the money but not the seats, simply enter the refund amount for each specific ticket or tickets, then select “Process Refund”. By not refunding the “tickets” the seats will remain in the possession of the customer.
Other times you will want to do the reverse and return the tickets but not the money. Click on the “Initiate Refund” button, and this time, you’ll enter the quantity of tickets you would like to return to inventory. The refund amount on the right will automatically change accordingly. Manually change the refund amount back to zero. When ready, click “process refund”.
Patrons sometimes cannot attend an upcoming show, but want to donate the money they paid to the theater instead. If you would like to return the seats back to your inventory while retaining the money from the transaction, navigate back to the order page and select Convert to Donation. Select the fundraiser to which you would like to place the donation and click Transfer.
Some venues offer refunds to gift cards for future use. To do so, you can click Refund to Gift Card on the order page to customize how much of the order you would like to refund to a gift card that will be automatically emailed to the patron.
In some cases, you may want to perform multiple refunds at once. Navigate to the Events page, click manage on your desired event, and hover over the performance date to find the Batch Refund option. Several criteria must be true in order for this time-saving batch refund to be applied to each order.
The order must be a credit card purchase performed by the customer. They cannot be part of a Defined or Open Package, nor have coupons applied. Finally, they cannot have an associated partial refund or exchange. With batch refunds, any donations made with the purchase will not be refunded, however, you may choose to refund the balance separately.
Occasionally, an order may be purchased in error. If the error is recognized immediately, you may be able to void the order since refunds often aren’t available until the payment settles, usually the next day. Some gateways treat a void as a complete invalidation of everything purchased and prevents the charge from ever going through. This saves gateway processing fees of the original order. Not all payment gateways offer a Void function. Select “Initiate Void” and enter a reason here for your records. The full value of the order will go back to the credit card listed here. Once ready, click on “Process Void”. Your confirmation will appear upon completion. The charge will still appear as pending on your customer’s statement for a day or two, but it will never actually settle as a payment.
Alright, that’s it for now. If you have any questions, we have lots of documentation in our support forum or you can open a support request! Thank you for watching!