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WePay Refunds & Your Registrations (COVID-19)

Tracy Nelson
  • Updated

If your team finds itself making the very challenging decision to cancel your season or alter it drastically, we’re so sorry—our hearts go out to you and your families!

Depending on the specific decision for your team, there are considerations for how you will want to manage your existing registrations within your SwimTopia site. Even if your team is able to salvage a portion of your season, it’s likely that some families will choose to withdraw.

We’re hopeful the information below will help ease your mind as you determine the best course of action for your team during this unprecedented time. And should you decide to issue refunds, we recommend you communicate that as early as possible to your families, to avoid potential chargebacks (credit card disputes). 

Your friendly SwimTopia Customer Happiness Team is just a support ticket or phone call away, and if you need to issue refunds to your families, WePay is ready to help you through this process as needed.

Covered in this Article:

Full Refunds Within 60 Days of Transaction

Full refunds can be issued through your WePay account within 60 days. If you do not see a "Refund" button, this is an indication that the transaction is beyond 60 days. 

>>Note: You must have admin rights to your WePay account to perform refunds.

➞ See our Help Center article about WePay Refunds for a step-by-step guide. 

Full Refunds Older Than 60 Days of Transaction

If you need to issue any refunds for transactions that are older than 60 days, you will need to submit a ticket to WePay Customer Support. WePay will need the following information:

  • Payer Name
  • Transaction ID
  • Amount of Payment
  • Date of Payment 
  • Amount of Requested Refund

If you need to issue multiple refunds that are older than 60 days, you may submit them all on a spreadsheet, with the above fields. 

Partial Refunds

If you’d like to issue a partial refund, you will need to submit a ticket to WePay Customer Support.  They’ll need the following information:

  • Payer Name
  • Transaction ID
  • Amount of Payment
  • Date of Payment
  • Amount of Requested Refund

If you need to issue multiple partial refunds, you may submit them all on a spreadsheet, with the above fields.

Refund Requests to WePay via Spreadsheet

You can download a CSV export of your WePay transactions, which may help you create your spreadsheet for refunds. 

➞ See our Help Center article about WePay Reporting for instructions to create a CSV export.

>>Note: WePay has requested separate spreadsheets for full (beyond 60 days) vs. partial refunds to help keep the transactions separate.

WePay Transaction Fees

➧ Partial Refund: you forfeit all of the WePay fees that you or the buyer (if configured) have paid. 

➧ Full Refund: all of your WePay processing fees will be refunded. It’s as if the charge never happened.  

Let's take a simplified example where a family's registration fee was $100 and the WePay fees were $3:

  • Example 1: WePay fees were paid by the Buyer (your families) --
    • Original transaction -- The family paid $103.  You would have received $100 and WePay would receive $3. 
    • Full refund -- WePay will take $100 from your account to give back to the family, and WePay will add their own $3, so the family will receive $103.
  • Example 2: WePay fees were paid by the Seller (your team) --
    • Original transaction -- The family paid $100.  You would have received $97 and WePay would receive $3. 
    • Full refund -- WePay will take $97 from your account to give back to the family, and WePay will add their own $3, so the family will receive $100.

Charging a Portion of the Registration Fee

If you’re trying to charge your families a portion of their registration fee for the season to help recoup some of your fixed costs, it might be easier for you to issue a full refund to all of your families (especially if all of those transactions are less than 60 days), and then ask them to pay again for the lower amount. 

Here are a few options to choose from:

  • Option 1: Set up a merchandise item on your online store for this partial fee for the season and ask your families to purchase the merchandise item (do not reject their registrations in SwimTopia, so they can access the online store), or 
  • Option 2: Set up a new registration form for the lower amount, reject all of the original registrations, then ask your families to re-register using the new registration form

SwimTopia Registration Status for Refunded Accounts

There is no communication between your WePay account and your SwimTopia site when you initiate a refund. All of the registrations are still listed as "Paid," and all of the parents who have registered are still considered to be "active" for the current season (2020).

If you don't want these refunded parents active for 2020, go to Manage Team > Registration > Click on "View Registrations" for the appropriate registration form.  Find the name of the family in either "Pending" or "Approved," then click on the blue Reject button. 

This will remove the family from your roster; they will no longer receive emails, or be able to sign up for meets or volunteer jobs. This will also ensure your reports are accurate, such as "Seasons on Team," "Non-returning Athletes" and "Rookie Athletes."

➧ Is there a chance for a condensed season at some point? 

If so, we suggest holding off on rejecting these registrations, since doing so will take these families off all email lists for the current season and they won't be able to log in to the website. 

This will allow you to email everyone who was part of the original 2020 season using the “Members” group to provide specifics around the condensed season. Once you’ve sent your communications to those families, you can then reject their existing registration so they can re-register under the new form if they choose to do so.

>>Note: if a parent registers on more than one registration form in the current season, SwimTopia assumes that parent is registering another child. So the children that were registered in the first registration form won't be autofilled in the subsequent registration forms.  So this is why you'd want to Reject the parents from the spring registration form after you've sent your email(s). Once the first registration forms are rejected, if parents complete a subsequent registration form, SwimTopia will autofill all of the parents' and children's info.

➧ Is there no chance of a season at all in 2020? 

If so, once you've issued your refunds, you'll likely want to reject all of your 2020 registrations.  

After that, we recommend you set the 2020 season to "unofficial."  When you're ready to open registration for 2021, you can send messages to "Members Previous Season," and your communications will go to the 2019 families.

If you do need to contact the families who registered in 2020, you can do so through Reports: go to Reports > Registration Details/Export Report and select only "Rejected" registrations.  Once you generate the report, you'll see a button to Compose Communication.

WePay’s Refund Recovery Process

If you have funds in your WePay account, the refunds will be taken from your WePay balance.  If refunds are issued when there is no balance available in WePay (ie. funds have already been withdrawn/settled to your bank account), then an automatic recovery attempt will be triggered. The recovery is an attempt to recoup those funds from your linked bank account. There is not a way to transfer money from your bank account into your WePay account.

>>Note: please ensure you have enough funds either in your WePay and/or bank account to cover your refunds. 

Chargebacks

Some of your families may initiate chargebacks (disputing and refusing to pay for their credit card charge).  

You may either concede or challenge the chargeback.

➞ See WePay’s Help Center article about Chargebacks for more information and detailed how-to’s about chargebacks.

➞ See WePay's Chargeback Info Sheet

>>Note: It is possible for a chargeback request to arrive even after you’ve issued a refund. 

From WePay: 

Merchants can receive chargebacks up to 120 days after the original transaction occurred. Cardholders tend to reach out to both the merchant and their bank to receive the disputed funds. Sometimes the bank still issues a chargeback - even after you provide a refund - since the bank is not aware of this refund. If this happens, we encourage you to challenge the chargeback and provide evidence about the refund being issued.

From the day that you receive your first chargeback notification, you will have 5 business days to submit your evidence. This window ensures that WePay has sufficient time to represent the evidence to the cardholder’s bank and/or card network within their allocated timeframes.

➞ For more information, see WePay’s Help Center article, Can You Cancel a Chargeback?

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