Race Directors can now make refunds to group members who joined a team before the group size discount was met. This is a powerful extension to our Group Pricing, so group members are not waiting on each other to sign up for the race.
For example, Groups can have a $5 discount per team member once a team reaches a minimum number of people (say 10). Now the first 9 people will get a $5 refund when the 10th person joins.
There are no processing refund fees for these cases, and there is no manual intervention the race director needs to do expect maintain a refund balance to make payment with.
Group Refunds
You can offer automatic refunds to group participants as new participants register. This works best in combination with a member registration fees set up with lower prices for larger groups, since you can refund the initial participants to have all registrants pay the same price. Note that the refunds are cumulative, so a registrant can get multiple refunds as more people register for the group.
Note to set your Event Pricing # and Refund registrant count correctly. In the above example, you would set the Event Pricing discount at 9 since the discounted pricing takes effect AFTER the number – in effect on the 10th person joining the team. By setting the Refund at 10, then it will do a refund to the previous 9. In most cases your Refund number will be one higher than the Discount number.
We highly discourage changing these refund settings after registration has opened. Doing so can result in duplicate or skipped refunds. Also, if members drop out of a group, any refunds already issued will not be recovered.
Refunds will only be issued for groups where a member is added after refunds have been set up. This means that members of any groups that already registered will not receive discounts unless someone else registers for the group.
Also, note that when team members are removed, past refunds are not cancelled. However, the code ensures that the same refund isn’t given when the group size threshold is passed again. Here is an example. Suppose a $5 refund is to be given to registrants 1 – 4 when members #5 registers (5a) and a $3 refund is to be given to registrants 1 – 9 when member #10 registered. If the 5th person registers, members 1 – 4 will get their refund. If registrant #4 is removed from the team, no additional refund will be given when the new registrant #5 registers (5b). When the 10th person registers, registrants 1 – 9 will get a #4 refund. Note that registrant 5a will only have received a total of $3 in refunds, not $3 + $5 = $8, even though s/he is now the 4th registrant for the group.
Other Notes
- We do NOT charge the $1 refund process fee.
- Refunds are processed every hour at 30 minutes after the hour. There is a queue of groups that have had a member added and the last time that occurred. The groups in the queue are processed for refunds if the last addition was >= 20 minutes ago. This is to lessen the issues that could occur if the 15 minute clear option is used.
- When you turn this feature on, it will automatically turn on the Refund Reserve if it is not already on.
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