There are three related methods in which a previous transaction can be corrected. Below we go over the methods and explain when it’s appropriate to either refund, void or withdraw.
Refund
Refund is the opposite transaction to a sale. Issuing a refund is the most common action taken to correct previous POS or online transaction. For example, when a parent contacts the school saying that her child was mistakenly charged for two cookies instead of one some time in the past, issuing a refund is the most appropriate way to correct it. The historical sale transaction is not changed when you do a refund. You are creating a new “refund” transaction with today’s date. If you run the Revenue Report for the date of the sale, before and after the refund was issued, you would not see any difference in the number of products sold. Remember, a refund is not cancelling or changing the past. The historical sale stays as is, unchanged. When you issue a refund you are creating a new transaction which counters the effects of the historical (sale) transaction. Money is returned back to the student’s wallet, equal to the value of the products being refunded, and the Revenue Report spanning the day of the refund is adjusted for the refunded items.
Void
Void is deleting a historical transaction. Under rare circumstances you may prefer to void rather than to refund a transaction. This is useful when there was a problem with the payment itself. For example:
- A school received a paper check from a parent but later it bounced with insufficient funds. You do not want to issue a refund to student wallet since no money was even received.
- A parent made an online deposit using a Credit Card and shortly after called the school saying she made a mistake. If you can still cancel the Credit Card deposit in Forte (our payment processor) you can void the PushCoin deposit as if it never happened.
- A cashier made a mistake and deposited $20.00 instead of $2.00 through the POS terminal.
- A cashier made a mistake and pressed Cash button instead of Charge in the POS terminal. If the cashier forgot to cancel the transaction within 60 seconds at the terminal, you can still void the transaction online and bill the student again.
Keep in mind that by voiding a transaction you are erasing it from the past as if it never happened. (Strictly speaking, voided transactions leave a trace for audit purposes). If you run the Revenue Report before and after the void was done you would see a change in the total amount collected or quantity of products sold.
Withdrawal
Finally we arrive at a withdrawal. Withdrawal is the opposite transaction to a deposit. Unlike the refund or void, a withdrawal is not a corrective action per se, since it doesn’t need to follow a mistake. An office clerk can make a withdrawal of any remaining balance of a student wallet, for example when a student simply leaves the district. Withdrawal has no impact on revenue or sales. It merely reduces the available balance in the student wallet by the withdrawal amount.