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LeagueApps Learning Recap: Managing Existing Payments and Invoices

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By Jamie Hancock
April 2, 2020
4 min

This week, our LeagueApps Learning session focused on what you can do to manage existing payments and invoices, and communicate effectively with your customers. Below, we’ve outlined some of the key platform features that you’ll want to keep in mind as you navigate the unchartered waters of COVID-19, along with a summary of the live Q&A session with attendees.

 

Communication Tactics

 

Communications Toolkit

The most important thing you can do to maintain business continuity is develop strong lines of communication with your customers and community. We put together a toolkit to help you share the right messages in the most effective manner possible—click here for tips, templates, and best practices.

 

Messaging Tools

Our Compose A Message tool includes robust filters so that you can segment messages to your community based on program types, game dates, and more. The Email Template tool can help scale these communications. 

 

Program Adjustments

 

Program Status

Use the override program status feature to quickly halt registration for active programs while your season is on hold.

 

Calendar Alerts

Disable calendar reminders to avoid confusing automated emails that could be set to send for events and games that are now cancelled or postponed.

 

Invoice Management

 

Credits

If a customer asks for a refund, propose a Credit instead that can be used towards a future program—you might be surprised to find that people are willing to be flexible. Credits are easy to manage in LeagueApps, where you can keep all of your payment records in one place. We are seeing some partners issue Bonus Credits as an incentive (the program price + 10% extra!).

 

Installment Dates

Push back installments on payment plans to accommodate your customers. You can edit due dates per installment. Pro Tip: Edit just the first installment instead of all installments. For example, if installments are due on May 1, June 1, and July 1, and you want to delay the May installment until June, edit the May 1 installment to Aug 1. This will prevent the need to change the June and July installments.

 

Payment plan installments must be addressed at the invoice-level: changes cannot be made on a program-level. If this is overwhelming for your staff, please contact us at support@leagueapps.com so we can lend a hand.

 

Question & Answers

We answered many questions from the audience live on the learning session, but in case you missed them here is a summary. 

 

Credits:

Is there a report to see the credits we have issued in our LeagueApps account?

Yes, navigate to Manage > Credits to view a report of your customers that have Credits on their accounts. You can also use the Registration Report to view when a credit is redeemed; it will also show on the specific Invoice that a Credit was applied. 

 

Can a Credit be applied to a specific installment of a payment plan? Example: If I give a $500 credit toward next season on a program with five installments of $250, can the family use that $500 for the first 2 installments?

Unfortunately, no not at this time; credits used during registration are evenly applied across all installments.

 

If you issue a Credit, is it possible to provide a refund to the customer’s credit card at a later date if needed?

Yes, as long as the invoice is still within the online refund window! Remember to also remove the credit if you go this route by navigating to Manage > Credits.

 

How do you manage the “bonus” credit idea?

You can offer more credit than what was paid to incentivize Credits over Refunds. As an example: Customer paid $100, a refund would give $100 back, or you could offer a 20% Credit Bonus, giving them $120 Credit to use towards a future program.  This can be done directly on the invoice when issuing a site credit.

 

Invoices:

If a league is cancelled and a customer paid a deposit, do we have to manually adjust the Amount Owed to zero so that they do not have an outstanding invoice?

Yes, if there is still money due on the invoice, it will show as outstanding even if a program is cancelled until you manually adjust the invoice.

 

How long does it take for a customer to get a refund, and how long is the online refund window on LeagueApps invoices?

Refunds usually take around 5-7 business days to hit a customer’s credit card account. The timeframe that refunds are allowed depends on your payment gateway. LeagueApps Gateway is 180 days, Authorize.net is 120 days, and Stripe is 60 days. After the online refund window closes on an invoice, you can issue refunds via Check, Cash, or a tool like Venmo. 

 

When we issue a credit or debit card refund, do we get refunded the processing fees we were charged? 

Yes, refunds in LeagueApps return 100 percent of the refunded amount back to the cardholder. In addition, you are credited back any fees associated with the original transaction.

 

Payment Plans:

Is it possible to do bulk invoice adjustments to change the due date for payments?

Unfortunately not. Due dates need to be changed on each individual invoice. Changing settings at the program-level will only apply to NEW registrations and invoices. If you are overwhelmed with invoice adjustments, reach out to our support team (support@leagueapps.com) and we can help!

 

Can you generate a report with payment plans that still have payments left, but not necessarily overdue?

Yes, navigate to Manage > Invoices, and filter by “Partial” and “Payment Plans on Schedule” to view this report. 

 

To learn more about these features, you can watch the recording of our LeagueApps Learning session here.