Overview

This article answers the most common refund and payment-plan troubleshooting questions admins ask: how to refund a payment when part of it was reconciled or came from a payment plan, what to do when a customer paid with the wrong card, why admins cannot edit or charge a customer's card on file, and how payment plans get turned on for your organization.

Refunding a payment when there is more than one transaction (reconciled / payment-plan payments)

When a customer has paid in more than one transaction — for example, an initial enrollment payment plus a separate balance or payment-plan payment that had to be reconciled — the standard cancel-and-refund flow may only let you refund the original enrollment charge. Refund the additional payment separately using ADD TRANSACTION.

1. Cancel the enrollment. Cancel the customer's enrollment so the registration is no longer active.
2. Refund the original enrollment payment. Refund the amount the customer paid at the time of enrollment.
3. Refund any additional payment. Go to the customer's Account Summary, click ADD TRANSACTION, select Refund credit card, choose the other payment the customer made (for example, the separate balance or failed-payment-plan payment you reconciled), and refund that amount as well.

This lets you return the full amount the customer paid even though it arrived in more than one transaction.

Balancing the account after a partial refund

If you issue a Refund - Credit Card without canceling the full enrollment (a partial refund), the account will show a balance owed. To balance the account back to $0, after the Refund - Credit Card you also need to add a Misc Credit: go to ADD TRANSACTION > Misc-Credit. See How to Issue a Partial Refund for the detailed steps: https://support.teamsideline.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028761511-How-to-Issue-a-Partial-Refund

Customer paid with the wrong card and wants it refunded

If a customer made a balance payment with the wrong card, you can refund that payment using the partial-refund steps above. The customer can then log in to their account and make the balance payment again using the card they prefer.

Admins cannot edit or charge a customer's card on file

A common question is whether an admin can update a customer's saved card or charge it after a failed payment. The answer is no:

• Admins cannot edit the customer's payment method. The customer must update their own card. Have them sign in to your organization's home page, click the Payment Plans link, and click the (change) link to update their billing and credit card information, then click Update Payment. See How to set up or update your Payment Plan as a Customer: https://support.teamsideline.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001205483-How-to-set-up-or-update-your-Payment-Plan-as-a-Customer
• Admins cannot initiate a charge against a stored card outside the agreed-upon payment plan dates. The system only allows charges the customer explicitly authorized at checkout (the initial payment and the scheduled payment-plan payments). Charging a saved card for an amount or at a time the customer did not authorize could violate card network rules, so TeamSideline does not allow it.
• If you need to collect an additional payment, have the customer log in and make a balance payment themselves — they can do this at any time.
• For a failed payment-plan charge, the system automatically retries the failed payment, so you do not need to process it manually.

Payment plans must be activated by TeamSideline before setup options appear

The option for parents to select a payment plan, and the admin payment-plan setup options, do not appear for an organization until TeamSideline staff enables the feature for your site. If you do not see payment-plan options:

1. Email support@teamsideline.com to request that Payment Plans be added to your site.
2. After the feature is enabled, log out and log back in to see the payment-plan changes.
3. Set up your payment plans using How To Setup Recurring Payment Plans: https://support.teamsideline.com/hc/en-us/articles/215799763-How-To-Setup-Recurring-Payment-Plans

For additional payment-plan questions, see Payment Plan FAQs: https://support.teamsideline.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005532463-Payment-Plan-FAQs

Possibly related existing article: How to Issue a Partial Refund — https://support.teamsideline.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028761511-How-to-Issue-a-Partial-Refund — That article covers the partial refund + Misc-Credit balancing step in detail. This new draft is still needed because it consolidates the multi-transaction/reconciled refund flow, the card-on-file limitations, and the payment-plan activation requirement, which are not covered together anywhere; it links out to the partial refund article rather than duplicating it.