Changes to approving payment group registrations

We've been working for some time on making changes to the approval of new and edited payment group registrations. These enhancements have now been released. This article explains the changes and how they will affect you. 

Why the change?

The changes are to make it much simpler for adminstrators to approve edited registrations, whilst retaining (and enhancing) the current flexibility which enable the payment groups feature to have so many applications i.e.conferences, donations, subscriptions etc.

Now, once you have your default options configured in the way that you want, you can even set up your payment group to 'auto-approve' any edits that users make, and automatically deal with receivables and carry out re-assignments

What has changed?

New 'approval' options

There .are now additional approval options on both new and edited registrations.

The options on new registrations are:

• When do you want this donation to be approved?
  When approving a registration you'll now be asked 'When do you want this donation to be approved?'. This feature enables the approval of the registration, and resulting benefits, to be delayed to a later specified date. For example, one of your donors may wish to increase their monthly gift, but would prefer the payment to be taken on the day after their salary is paid. You just set the date, and the system does it for you.
  
  Selecting the 'Now' option will approve the registration immediately.
  
• Do you want to prevent this donation from being auto-suspended for a period?
  If you have auto-suspension options set up on your payment scheme, this option enables you to exempt a registration from auto-suspension for a specified period. If your payment group has suspension rules that mean a card failure would automatically suspend the user then, this option could be used to prevent this suspension for a period to allow an administrator to attempt to take the payment again. This is useful because when changes are made to a registration, there will often be outstanding payments as a result, and sometimes it is necessary to give the administrator time to contact the user to ask them to make arrangements to settle any missed payments within an agreed time period before the registration is suspended.
  

New 'Editing' options

Administrators can now define how receivables on each payment scheme, on both the old (superseded) and new registration, will be handled, when an edited registration is approved. This configurability means that approving an edited registration can be a straightforward task for administrators, as re-assignment of previous payments and refunds can be processed automatically.

Existing payment groups will retain the current behaviour, so you don't need to worry about any unexpected actions when approving edited registrations in your current payment groups. You can, of course, set the defaults however you like, or use the overrides on individual registrations in order to take advantage of the new functionality straight away.

Newly created payment groups, however, will automatically be setup with appropriate default editing payment options according to the type of payment group created e.g. an on-going subscription would have different options from a conference booking. You can tweak these options to achieve exactly the effect that you desire for your particular situation.

After creating a new payment group you should check that the 'approving edit' options match what you require. To review and make changes to these options select each payment scheme and check the default options for approving edits. Each option has a help link to access a full description of the options available.

When approving edited registrations the payment scheme's 'default registration options' will now be displayed on all payment groups, including existing payment groups. If a payment scheme is selected the default options are displayed, with a checkbox which allows you to override any of the default options. In most cases, once your defaults options are set correctly, you won't need to override.

For registrations that included payment schemes with a fixed number of payments, we used to ask 'Would you like to restart the term?' when approving edits. This question is now asked on a scheme by scheme basis, so you will need to drill down into the scheme options in order to apply this setting.

New 'Confirmation' options 

On the 'Confirmation' tab of the Payment group settings, if you have selected 'allow changes to registration after completion', then you will see a new option:'Changes to registration after registration require approval'. This is checked by default, meaning that a payment group administrator must approve every edit that a user makes to their registration.

Once you are certain that all your options are set correctly, you may wish to uncheck this box, meaning that edits to registrations will be automatically approved, and all your default options applied.

What do the changes mean for me?

We have tried as far as possible to ensure that there are no unexpected changes for existing payment groups. Using the current defaults will mean that you get behaviour that closely mirrors the existing behaviour. We would advise, however, making staff who approve registrations aware of the new options available when approving new and edited registrations.

When creating a new payment group you should check the default 'approval editing options' are configured to what you require. Once you are comfortable with the options available It would be advisable to review your existing payment groups and configure their options to make approving edited registrations simpler.

As always, if you have any questions about these new features please contact us.