Refund approvals

A second pair of eyes on large refunds

Refunds are money leaving the business, often in a hurry and under pressure from an unhappy traveller. In a small team that is fine. As the team grows, owners want a rule: refunds above a certain size need someone else to agree. Refund approvals adds that maker-checker step, without slowing down the everyday refunds below your limit.

A refund above your limit waits in Finance › Payments › Refund approvals until a second person approves it. The person who asked can never approve their own refund. Every step is in the booking history and the activity log, and the people who can act are told by email and push notification.

Setting the limit

The limit can be an amount, 500 in your main currency by default, a share of the booking, or both. Refunds in other currencies are converted with your exchange rates, and if there is no rate for a currency the refund waits for approval. Earlier refunds on the same booking count too, so five refunds just under the limit are treated as one large refund. A share is useful when booking values vary widely: with 50%, refunding more than half of any booking needs approval, whatever the amount.

A worked example with both rules set at 500 and 50%: refunding 300 of a 2,000 booking goes straight out. Refunding 600 of it waits, because it is over 500. Refunding 200 of a 350 day trip also waits, because it is more than half the booking.

Choose who approves: anyone with the “Approve refunds” permission, which owners always have, or owners only. Both a booking’s refund and a single payment’s refund go through the check. Refunds the system makes by rule, such as when you cancel a departure or a traveller cancels themselves under your policy, don’t.

Time limits and legal deadlines

Each request has an escalation time, 24 hours by default. If nobody decides by then, every owner is emailed and notified. For a cancelled package, package travel law gives you 14 days to refund. By default Tourtify approves such a refund automatically one day before that deadline, so an approval that sits in someone’s queue never puts you outside it. If you prefer, it only escalates to owners and never approves on its own.

Setting up Refund approvals

1. 1Switch on Refund approvals. Turn the plugin on in your console.
2. 2Set the limit. Enter an amount, a percentage of the booking, or both.
3. 3Choose the approvers. Anyone with the “Approve refunds” permission, or owners only.
4. 4Give the permission. Add “Approve refunds” to the roles that should approve.
5. 5Set escalation and deadline rules. Choose the escalation time and what happens before a legal refund deadline.