What is an adjustment?
Don't think refunds or credits, just think, "How much do I need to adjust the fees charged?" and we do the rest.
For example, if the fee charged to a student was £20 but now it needs to be £10, you need to make an adjustment. You can mark an adjustment as a Correction, Discount, Write off or Cancellation (for reporting so that you can track why your fees were adjusted).
During an adjustment of a charge, SchoolsBuddy checks if a payment has already been made (by a payment method, cash or cheque), determines which parent made the payment, and transfers credit to this parent's wallet in seconds. If they are yet to make the payment, then it will simply reduce the charge.
The amount to adjust is always a deduction from the charge. Should you want to increase the fees charged see this article: Adding an additional fee to a student for an existing event
How to make an adjustment (which will automatically credit the parent wallet account / reduce the fee).
There are two locations within SchoolsBuddy to make an adjustment to a charge against a student.
1. Fees summary screen (Fees | Summary)
Use this page for full or partial adjustments.
- Click on the Fees tab
- Click on Summary
- Click the + signs until the charge you wish to adjust appears
- Click on the Adjust Fee icon
This will bring up the Fee Adjustments Pop Up Screen
Within the popup edit the amount to reduce the fees by, an optional description and a reason, then click submit.
Reason for adjustment
When making adjustments you can categorise the adjustment as one of the following types while adding a description and reference:
- Cancellation * (If you cancel an event)
- Correction (for example, for any pricing mistakes)
- Write-off (Any outstanding money that you are going to write off)
- Discount (for any reason)
* Please note, if you remove someone from either a single event or block booking you will have the option to remove the charge automatically.
Please note: the amount to adjust is the amount to reduce from the total outstanding.
2. Cancelling a student from an event in an Instant Book & Pay container
Use this method to cancel a booking at the same time as adjusting the fee. You can give a full credit or no credit.
- Go to Activities & Clubs Admin
- Locate the required container and click Manage
- Click View Events/Booking
- Select an event and click on Attendees
- Click on the Trash icon for the student
Once clicked, the pop-up adjustment will show, allowing for simple crediting of the parent account if necessary. This is how it appears for a an event set up as a block booking:
This is the view for an event set up as an individual booking:
When cancelling someone from an event you can automatically adjust the charges to zero at the same time if you wish. If the parent had already paid then this would automatically be transferred to their wallet, available for them to use on future bookings.
There is no option for partial refund from this screen and if the event is a block booking all of the amount is adjusted.
If you do want to do a partial refund, uncheck the Adjust all charges to zero box and instead find the transaction from the fees summary screen and adjust the charge from this screen.
Parent Wallet Account (Credit Accounts)
If a payment has been recorded this will automatically be credited back to the parent's wallet from where the parent (or staff from 'Manual Booking' tab) can use this to pay for alternative or future events.
Parent wallet account balances can be seen from the Wallet Accounts Overview tab, under the main fees tab.
From this screen, you can search for a parent and sort by any of the headers. By default, this screen shows those parents that have the highest credit balance.
Processing refunds
Refunds would need to be processed from the Wallet Accounts Overview. With relevant account access, the withdrawal buttons can be clicked and a withdrawal can be processed to clear a parent credit. An advanced fee admin staff role must be set by the super admin user for this withdrawal or credit to be applied. The 'View Transactions' button will show details of any payment reference needed to process a refund with the original payment provider (Paysafe, Checkout, Stripe, AsiaPay, PayFort etc.).
If you need to find out how to do this in more detail, please see the article Balance Updates - Parent Wallet
DO NOT use credits here as a form of adjustment, we do this from the two locations shown above. This button should only be used for additional ad-hoc credits or opening balances.
For additional information please refer to our guide to processing refunds