Resumption of Web CC Refunding & Process

SIS SF Web Credit Card Payment Refunds

During recent SIS refunding activities, many colleges noted and reported errors when processing Web credit card payment refunds. For some students, refunds would post to their student account, but would be refused by CyberSource as having an invalid or missing Request ID. After consultations with CyberSource and PeopleSoft, we discovered the nature of the problem: CyberSource deletes all payment transactions from their on-line database after 60 days. CyberSource processing requires that all on-line refund requests match a corresponding historical payment. If the payment was made 60 days or more from the date of the refund request, the refund will usually fail because the matching payment transaction has been deleted by CyberSource. (It does appear that CyberSource is not consistent with the 60 day deletion, so occasionally an older transaction will process without error).

PeopleSoft Global Support Center is currently working to provide solutions to this problem, and VCCS ITS is investigating our options. In the mean time, VCCS Fiscal Services and ITS have developed a process to allow resumption of Web credit card refunding activities, and generation of a paper check refund for transactions failing at CyberSource due to the 60 day issue. Please follow this process when conducting Web credit card refunding activities:

  1. Process Web credit card refunds as normal.
  2. Conduct manual reconciliation of refunds. This involves cross-checking SIS and CyberSource Support Site / Reports to ensure that all refunds processed normally. Make a note of any refunds that failed due to invalid or missing Request ID's.
  3. Query the SF_Payment table. A new query exists in production, VX_SF_Payment_Declined_Refund. This query will list all posted but declined refund transactions with invalid data types remaining on the SF_Payment table. Please run this query to an Excel spreadsheet, as this will be used to submit to VCCS Fiscal Services.
  4. Cross-check the VX_SF_Payment_Declined_Refund query with the failed CyberSource refund transactions. Please be sure that all transactions remaining on the VX_SF_Payment_Declined_Refund spreadsheet should receive a paper-check refund.
  5. Submit the VX_SF...spreadsheet through IssueTrak (Issue Type: SIS Student Financials) to request refund checks from CARS, and deletion of the records from the SF_Payment table. These requests should be approved by the College VP of Finance or designated FRS Coordinator (if approving submission by designate, the College VP of Finance must send contact information to Roy Smith, VCCS Fiscal Services, rsmith@vccs.edu).
  6. VCCS Fiscal Services will submit the request for processing in FRS, and forward to VCCS ITS for deletion of records from the SF_Payment table.

If you have any questions about this process, please contact Jeff Mitchell, VCCS Client Services (jmitchell@vccs.edu, 804-423-6745).

Addendum: SIS Cashiering Credit Card Payments & Web Refunding Issues

In PeopleSoft SIS v8, the cashiering module is now linked to the Self-Service Credit Card payment module used for Web-based credit card payments. Version 8 is designed to process business office cashiering credit card payment entries through the Self-Service / CyberSource module. The VCCS Student Financials module setup prevents the entries from actually making it to the SF_Payment table for submission to CyberSource. However, the SIS batch refunding process selects credits on credit card payments made at the business office and  writes them to the SF_Payment table. When the Credit Card Processing is run with the “credit” flag checked, the module will attempt to process the refund at CyberSource.

Fortunately, the same mechanism which prevents refunding of payments older than 60 days also prevents these cashiering credit card refund transactions from processing at CyberSource. There is no corresponding payment transaction, and so CyberSource returns the transaction as declined. These transactions will automatically process refunds through the current FRS process, so VCCS Fiscal Services will be scanning the VX_SF_Payment_Declined_Refund spreadsheets submitted for paper-check refunding, and will delete these records before processing.

Jeff Mitchell, VCCS Client Services
Roy Smith, VCCS Fiscal Services