Post by tophat » Tue Oct 09, 2012 7:28 pm

Is there any extensions out there that deals with 'Credit Notes' ?

How do people currently go about refunding customers?

Yes, OC had the product 'Return' system, but say we need to refund carriage costs, compensation etc, then I can't see how one can do this within OC itself, and from an accounting and administrative perspective this is pretty key aspect missing. We'd like to keep order records running through OC for efficiency of using the available data rather than externally.

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Post by labeshops » Tue Oct 09, 2012 8:17 pm

Refunds are handled thru the payment processor, not opencart. I put a note in order history and change it's status to "refunded", but do the refund itself thru whatever payment method the customer used.

Running Opencart v3.0.3.2 with multi-stores and the default template from https://www.labeshops.com which has links to all my stores.


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Post by tophat » Wed Oct 10, 2012 5:55 am

labeshops wrote:Refunds are handled thru the payment processor, not opencart. I put a note in order history and change it's status to "refunded", but do the refund itself thru whatever payment method the customer used.
Hi, sure, we also do this through sage pay which is not a problem for the customer. However, from an accounting position you must align your invoicing. The invoice produced through OC will now be inocorrect. The tax man will find this unacceptable and also VAT payments are now incorrect and not following the invoice.

It's one thing doing the refund, but another recording it correctly. Which is why I want to make credit notes!

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Post by labeshops » Wed Oct 10, 2012 6:12 am

I post all my sales, including credits, into Quickbooks. Didn't realize that was what you meant.

Running Opencart v3.0.3.2 with multi-stores and the default template from https://www.labeshops.com which has links to all my stores.


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Post by tophat » Sat Oct 20, 2012 12:58 am

No worries.

We'll custom write something then I guess into OC (following the invoice/sales side of things but making it negative sales and thus becoming credit notes). OC totals and reports will then align. Using an external bookkeeping system in my opinion is wasted admin time with which we like to avoid when there always more important things to focus on!

I'd love to see the above brought into OC at some point as out of the box OC is still missing some important aspects such as this for full on eCommerce business's.

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Post by labeshops » Sat Oct 20, 2012 1:26 am

Opencart is not intended to be a bookkeeping program as well as a cart. I use an extension that imports my sales into quickbooks so I just have to reconcile them once a week and add my merchant fees, etc. Takes about an hour a week.

Running Opencart v3.0.3.2 with multi-stores and the default template from https://www.labeshops.com which has links to all my stores.


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Post by tophat » Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:04 pm

Clearly it's just us then that thinks is a necessity. It's much easier to utilise the data in OC than doing it in external software (such as Name, Date, Total, ID, Reason, Product, etc). Sure all our accounts are done through Sage Accounts, but in order to quickly get refund totals from thousands of orders is easier if it's all done in OC!

Anyway, going round in circles here and there clearly isn't a solution so am wasting my time. :(

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Post by dvh » Wed Oct 31, 2012 6:17 pm

For some reason Opencart seems completely incapable of dealing with refunds via the admin panel. It's one of its biggest flaws, and the usual response of "you can just do it through your payment processor" shows the naivety of a lot of the developers.

There's money to be made for someone who can make it happen. It would become an absolutely essential purchase for anyone using sagepay.

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Post by SXGuy » Wed Oct 31, 2012 6:52 pm

How exactly do you want opencart to handle refunds? you should list what you want, maybe a developer will then address it.

From my point of view it would work like this.

You are notified that the customer wants a refund, you email them and ask for the product to be returned (if applicable)

Once the item is returned, you change the order history status to Refunded.

At that point, opencart marks the payment as a negitive figure, and corrects all sales totals to deduct the amount refunded.

Sales history should show a -total figure and perhaps the letter R to show it was a refund.

Credit Notes are not needed, you are not crediting anyone with anything, you are giving the money back.

If you do not wish to issue a refund but give a credit instead, then this could be an optional extra i.e issue refunds or credit notes.

Refunds should still remain a manual opperation by you thru your payment processor to avoid any accidental refunds.

Original invoice should have a duplicate invoice created to show the money was returned.

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Post by tophat » Fri Nov 02, 2012 6:19 pm

dvh wrote:For some reason Opencart seems completely incapable of dealing with refunds via the admin panel. It's one of its biggest flaws, and the usual response of "you can just do it through your payment processor" shows the naivety of a lot of the developers.

There's money to be made for someone who can make it happen. It would become an absolutely essential purchase for anyone using sagepay.
Totally Agree! It's true to say that developers haven't got experience in the real life situation of running the company and website. Refunds are unfortunately a slice of this!

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Post by tophat » Fri Nov 02, 2012 6:30 pm

SXGuy wrote:How exactly do you want opencart to handle refunds? you should list what you want, maybe a developer will then address it.

From my point of view it would work like this.

You are notified that the customer wants a refund, you email them and ask for the product to be returned (if applicable)

....................
Hey,

Well the situation that necessitates refunds is often not actually an order return. This is the missing link. Of course, it's very easy to change the status and what not, but most of the time it is a refund for A) delivery reimbursed B) Compensation C) Part of the order not required D) Change of order. C) A million other possible things!

So as you can see, all these scenarios don't dictate a cancellation of an order. Sure you can amend the order, but it's very difficult to do when you're refunding unique amounts to the customer which aren't based on products (which is most of the time).

Therefore, the best way in my opinion (and the way our developers are going to build it, we'll see if we can share it) is to almost raise an order like a sale but in a negative value. In a new window simply type the order ID to input the fields. Select the reason for the credit, press submit and it add's it to a list of Credit Notes which will live under " Sales" Tab. Working similar to returned products, but obviously they're not returning a product which is why we can't use that feature.

Hopefully that makes sense. Naturally, once this note has been raised, we can in sage make the physical refund. Maybe one day we'll automate that feature also.

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Post by sb12759 » Wed Dec 12, 2012 3:57 am

I would love an extension for this as well!
Seems like you could keep it simple and just add an editable amount box (amount of refund), maybe a comment or reason text box to explain the refund, and then save or apply. And it would update the order and show the new total.
Then do the corresponding refund with autorize.net or whatever payment processor you use. Then at least everything is in sync.
Many people will just want to do a full refund (for a return etc) but for me, the more likely scenario is a partial refund because orig shipping charges won't be refunded or there is a restocking fee etc. So I think a lot of people will need to be able to put in the refund amount rather then only able to do the fixed original sale amount.

My 2 cents - thanks!

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Post by dbdropper » Wed Mar 29, 2023 6:47 pm

While I know this thread is 10+ years old, it is the first result on search and the problem is still not resolved.

I would imagine the official answer is "go buy an extension for that", but it's not an answer
  • extensions are less tested
  • extensions may introduce vulnerabilities (happened to us)
  • extensions cost money for something that should be available out-of-the box
For those stuck with Opencart like we are,
  • Long-term answer: switch to e.g. Prestashop (https://docs.prestashop-project.org/1.7 ... edit-slips)
  • Short-term answer: see if you can use the built-in returns for this. Have a script that looks for all completed returns within given date range and produces PDFs designed to be credit notes. Problem with this is:
    • currently, Opencart returns can have only one product per return
    • you can not have a return for the postage fee
    • you can not have a partial return (if for whatever reason you need to refund an arbitrary amount)
    The above will require some hot-fixing, but is better than nothing, and because it leverages the existing returns system, is better than reinventing something from scratch completely.
    The good news is customers will be able to request returns from within their account area, so less manual work for the store managers.

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