March Webinar 2024 - Attendee Financials

Q&A

These questions have been collated from the 3 regional webinars. Some questions were asked by more than one person, so you may not see the exact same wording you used in your question. Also we can only answer in general terms, so bear in mind your specific situation may need a different solution.

Useful links mentioned in this webinar:
Read more information about Attendee Financials.
Setting up overall preferences: Application Setup
Set up for your event: Setup Panel
Payment Statuses: Payment Statuses, Payment Schedules and Cancellation Policies

 
Log into the Support Portal to see all the payment, refund & financial related FAQs (if you're not logged in, these will take you to the sign-in page).

Read more about the Azure Migration.  If you have questions about the migration that aren’t answered on those pages, please raise a Support ticket.

Add Another Attendee

When you add an attendee (as the payer) - which one has which receipt? 

They both do, however each will include the details - either who was paid for, or who paid (depending on whose receipt it is). 


Application set up

Why can't I see Application Setup?

Check with whoever is set up as an Administrator in your account, as it relates to the access level for your user account.


Billing address, Billing details

Where it says "collect billing details" on the payment page of an interactive site, how's that work?

The Billing Details section [on a payment page] can’t be ‘enabled’ within EventsAir – they only appear IF you’re using a payment gateway that requires it. (Some payment gateways require more details than others). Those details are only stored with your payment gateway provider, not in EventsAir.
 
 If you want to collect Billing Details to be included in a contact record [not the ones for the payment gateway], you could add a page and call it something like “Billing Contact Information” – add a heading and some explanatory text, then a Contact component with just the Billing Details elements from within the Contact module included. (But you can’t do this on the payment page itself, because you can’t add a Contact component to a Payment Page.)

What is the billing email address included under contact used for?

That billing email address can be displayed on an invoice layout (see next question) but the invoice will still be emailed to the contact record holder. However, you can add another email address to the Additional Email field and it will cc that person. 

How do I add the billing address to a pro-forma invoice?

If you’ve filled in the Billing Contact details on the Contact Record, these will appear on any invoices you issue after adding those details. (If no Billing Contact details are filled in, the attendees’ details will be there instead – or the details of the attendee who’s paying).  

Pro Forma Invoices work much the same way – Billing Contact is there by default, but if that’s blank, it’ll use the attendee’s details. 

However with a Pro Forma Invoice you don’t have that distinction between ‘Pending’ and ‘Issued’ as you do with normal invoices (also read the info below about Pro Forma Invoices). So any changes appear immediately.

You could also add other fields to a Pro Forma Invoice by copying it in the Reports section and creating a new version to send to your attendee. This new version will also appear in the list of Personalized Documents available in the Attendee record, and as a Merge Doc personalized document you can attach. 


Credit card partial payment

Can we set up partial payments via credit card? 

Yes, but you’d probably need to configure that as part of a payment schedule. Talk to your Success Specialist to get help with setting that up.


Currency exchange

Can I set up invoices that include both the event currency AND a local currency (with a dynamic exchange rate)?

This would require a custom invoice leveraging a lot of information. However, with EventsAir Pay, we can support real-time currency conversion (so you can charge clients in US dollars, but they can pay in Canadian dollars and all the currency exchange is taken care of).  Regarding the invoicing, talk to your Account Manager to see if a custom invoice is something we can develop for you.


Deleting an attendee record

We test our credit card payments with a $1 registration then refund it. How do we delete this information?

If there’s an ‘open’ financial transaction associated with the record – a payment’s been made, or a refund’s due, you can’t delete the attendee record completely. But if the refund’s been issued, you should just be able to delete the record. (Before you can delete an attendee record using the “Delete Attendee” action, you need to get all check marks on the delete attendee screen. This means either canceling all items if they were unpaid, or issuing credit notes and refunds if they were paid, so that you reconcile all outstanding transactions.) You also have to consider /ask your accounts team how they prefer to record these transactions for auditing purposes. You can also anonymize an attendee (using the Attendee Delete tool, choosing the anonymize option), so they’ll just show up as a number in a report.


EventsAir Pay

Is EventsAir Pay linked to PayPal? Who do I ask for more information?

EventsAir Pay isn’t linked to PayPal – they just work in a similar way. EventsAir Pay is powered by Airwallex – you can find out more here.


Groups - credit notes

For a group booking, if you just change one registration, when the invoice is unpaid it’ll credit the whole invoice - how do we fix this?

[The person who asked the question said it was answered later in the webinar.]


Interactive (registration) sites

Can we add EFT (electronic funds transfer) to the payment page if we're using a payment gateway? 

Many payment gateways don’t allow us to add that option. However, you should be able to use the “Additional Payment” option to collect those details and process manually as shown in the webinar.

For Submit Actions and edited registrations, can we apply 'Submit Action' if we manually adjust a record?

As long as edits are done via the registration form, the Submit Actions should trigger. Or you could create a second registration form for this purpose with the correct submit actions ready. Also, it wasn’t specifically mentioned, but was kind of alluded to: you can also use the “Confirmation” tab to quickly set up basic confirmation emails, instead of putting them under submit actions.


Invoices

Why can't we edit invoices (for spelling or address changes)? 

Just to clarify - you can edit pending invoices, which is why they're pending. We understand it’s frustrating but locking invoice editing after issue is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions and it’s there to preserve the integrity of your audit trail. That’s why we advise the way that’s generally considered ‘correct’: canceling the items, issuing a credit note, correcting the problem, then setting the payment status back to purchase to issue a new invoice. 

Depending on the situation, you could send a pro-forma invoice, as it will include updated address or spelling details. However, be careful doing this as it’s not considered exactly the same as an invoice, in tax or legal terms – it’s more like an ‘initial request for payment’ in that sense. 

You can also add this as a suggestion in the community forum on the support portal.  

There are also new laws coming into effect in the EU which may affect invoicing, so stay across these. 

What if we just want to add the purchase order number?  

You can use the “Add Purchase Order” button just for this purpose. It’s shown near the end of the webinar – check the chapters on the video. This allows adding a purchase order number to an issued invoice.  

You can also ask for a Purchase Order number on an interactive site Payment Page as shown in the webinar and it’ll add from there directly to the invoice.

How do you make all items appear on the same invoice (including negative amounts)? 

Separate invoices are only created if some items have already been paid for – so everything will be on the one invoice if nothing has yet been paid for. Therefore, you could decide not to issue any invoices until all items have been created (but not paid for). OR if payments have been made, you could cancel the items, issue credit notes, then change all the payment statuses back to purchase. This will push all the items onto one invoice.  

You could use a  Pro Forma Invoice for this (taking into account the cautions we’ve mentioned).

You could also create a custom invoice that pulls all the information from each module but is an actual invoice. This might be something to ask your Success Specialist about.  

Technically, an invoice may show a negative amount (if an overpayment was made for an item). But generally, credit notes are the proper way to show negative amounts due to refunds.

If we set up multiple invoice groups (A, B, C) and attach them to different registration types, do we need to have different merge docs?

No, just create a Merge Doc with the registration details and 'attach invoice' and it will automatically send the invoice layout that's supposed to go with that attendee's registration type. (We hope that answers your question - if not, please let us know).

How do you just send a pro-forma invoice and not issue an invoice? 

Just attach the Pro Forma Invoice (via Personalized Document) rather than the invoice. The invoice will stay as pending (so you can make changes to it) until you actually issue it. Don't forget you can create multiple merge docs and set up submit actions that filter by different criteria - so you might only want to send Pro-Forma Invoices to clients in a particular category, and invoices to everyone else.


Payment batches

Where do you enable open/close payment batches? 

In the Event Setup, under Financial, in Preferences, you enable “Track Payment Batches”. (You should also make sure the user has “Re-Open Payment Batches” enabled - that’s in Application Setup, under Users, if they’re not an Application Admin.)


Payment gateways

Can you use different payment gateways for different events?

Yes – just create the gateways and then apply them per event (as per webinar). (You can also override the default gateway on a site, and you can add additional payment gateways per site, on the payment page.)

Can we always refund via a payment gateway, and can we do partial refunds?

It’ll depend on your gateway and what they allow, and that you have it all set up correctly. Maybe also talk to your payment gateway provider, and ask your Account Manager if your payment gateway is suitable for what you're trying to do. 

Will my payment gateway be affected by the Azure Migration?

Some payment gateways will be affected, so make sure you review any necessary changes as soon as possible. There's more information in this article.


Payment statuses

What are the different payment statuses available in each module?

You can find a full breakdown in this article (which also explains payment and cancellation policies). 


Refunds

What if I want to reduce someone's fee after they've paid (give a partial refund)?

You could cancel the item, issue a credit note for the full amount, but only refund part of the amount. Then create a new item for the revised lower amount and set the payment status to purchase.  

Alternatively, in the item, you can add into the Adjustment field the amount you reduced it by (e.g. -100). The original invoice showing $450 will still be there, and a credit note for $100 will be generated. Then you can issue a refund for the adjustment amount. 

How do I refund if someone cancels, but then re-books other items?

This question was about how to combine everything on one invoice instead of having a credit note and an invoice in this scenario. We’re not sure, but we think this FAQ may answer your question – you’ll need to log into the support portal to see it:

How do I transfer a payment from one item to another (same record)? 
There was a similar question about transfers like this when the item's being charged to another contact. For anything like this, if you're not sure, it may be worth talking to your Success Specialist to find out how to set up what you need if this is a frequent occurrence. 

Refunds in the audit trail - why do they say payment?

Yes, it probably should say Refund, although it’ll be a negative amount so that indicates it’s a refund. We’ll also raise this with the team. 

What if I make a mistake when editing a payment - can I remove it from the audit trail?

If you edit a payment in the audit trail, there’ll always be a record of who edited it and when. So if you need to go back to make a second re-correction, that will also be recorded in the audit trail. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will show up on an invoice or receipt – it depends if all the numbers balance out in the end. But there’s no way to remove it from the audit trail, because that’s the whole idea of the audit trail. 


Reports

Can I get tips on invoice and report editing?

We recommend you look at the help pages and also the webinar we did mid-last year on reports and editing them. Editing invoices works the same way as editing reports and name badges, so you can also search for help and FAQs related to these. Some generic information is also available by searching online for DevExpress information (as this is the report editor platform). 

How do I get reports to show the payment date I want (even if it's not the actual payment date)?

This was a question about reports pulling the date that the payment was entered in EventsAir and not the payment date manually specified.  The current workaround is adding this to the description. We suggested reaching out to Support with details of the build, the event, and the report.

Can we get a list of all the Financial Reports?

  • Payment detail list – Summary of amounts paid, against what items and what receipts.
  • Payment summary list - A basic version of payments – record, but not items
  • Attendee Payment Details List – Name and all payments under that person’s record
  • Banking list – Totals for payment type
  • Attendee Summary – All items in the record, outstanding & paid and totals per attendee
  • Balance Due – Shows amount per module (no details)
  • Balance Outstanding list – Shows just where attendees owe you money – a grand total
  • Refund Due List – Will show any items where you need to process a refund (e.g. canceled, not allocated to another attendee)
  • Invoice list – details – Shows invoices & credit notes
  • Invoice Summary – Total and grand total
  • Event Statistics report – Overall payments, refunds, and monies outstanding, plus other stats like marketing responses & notes

In Global Reports – Financial - you can filter by dates, events

  • Global Banking Summary by Event – overall totals
  • Global Banking List –by date & payment type
  • Global Payment List – groups items together
  • Global Banking Summary by Date – totals by date, per event


Search

Can I search by invoice or receipt number?

Yes, you can use the Contact Locator tool to search for invoice/receipt number either within one event or globally.

Can I search by invoice prefix in the Contact Locator tool?

[When this was answered in the live webinar, we didn’t realize you were asking about the Contact Locator. So the live answer related just to invoice numbering itself – when adding a prefix, numbers the number will be generated automatically to follow on from that, and will follow the rules for invoice numbering pools you've set up.] 
 
 In the Contact Locator, you can’t search on prefix, so just use the invoice number (or any other field in the filter). You can also specify the event(s) you want to search in.

Can I search for a miscellaneous charge?

Since ideally you rarely use miscellaneous charge, there’s no quick way. (There is a way to report on miscellaneous invoices, however.) You can run the Detailed Invoice List report, then use the search (magnifying glass icon at the top of the report preview) to search for “Miscellaneous”. (It actually appears in the “Module” column.)


Tax

Can we set up different tax rates according to the attendee's billing address (country/region)?

Yes, you could set up multiple registration types, with different taxes. The easiest thing would be to ask a question (such as region) during registration, then use logic to only show the relevant registration type (and tax) to each attendee. Alternatively, you could create page logic that displays a whole page (of items) based on whether a certain field such as country matches a particular value. You wouldn't want to try to cover too many regions, though.

Can I get receipts to show a breakdown of the VAT amount?

At the moment, only the invoice will show these details, not the receipt. You may want to talk to your Account Manager about other options, such as a Smart Connector to an accounting program.


Suggestions

Why did the webinar example show the attendee Paper Cutt paying $600?

Yes, she had her own $300 registration, so the total was $600 for her and another person. Sorry, that was a bit confusing. 

Can we get a list of what's copied and what's not when cloning?

Yes, we’ll work on this! Please also add it to the Community Suggestions forum. One key thing: Attendee details don’t get cloned when you clone an event. (But you can export and import.)