How to manage refunds / returns in Marketplace? When VAT registered in the UK... [#1682762]

I know there are a few pages around that discuss this but I've been unable to find a conclusive answer.

So I've managed to set up a marketplace installation. I've set up Paypal's Website Payment Pro and linked it to Paypal's sandbox. I've enabled payment via Paypal's express checkout and cheque's. These payment methods all work and have been tested. That is, I can add products from various sellers and all the money get distributed properly to the sellers, including the shipping charges.

I've also brought in Ubercart Tickets, so buyers can open tickets against their orders and be given the returns address. Tickets are to be managed by the website staff, not the sellers...

So now I need to do a return / refund. How is this done within Marketplace? I'd be particularly interested in how sellers are charged back for the refunds...

i.e site pays seller for a sale one month but then the next month it is returned. Is this taken into account within the seller reports?

Any help, guidance or pointers to existing pages would be very much appreciated...

Comments

Comment #1

gMaximus CreditAttribution: gMaximus commented 18 July 2012 at 13:05

So I've gone into Paypal and refunded a transaction. This sends a IPN (Instant Payment Notification) to my Marketplace and the refund is logged in the payments log for the correct order, with the Paypal transaction ID. (Would be nice if that was a link to the Paypal transaction)...

Now there are changes that need to be made to the order, as mentioned elsewhere. I just don't understand the best route here:

1) Mark the order as cancelled and add order comment. Doesn't seem right for a marketplace as there maybe a partial refund i.e a sellers products are returned but not all products in the order... The order also disappears for the buyer and seller.
2) Edit the order and remove the refunded products and add order comment. This seems nice because I've noticed that this action puts the products back on sale too.

Any other routes that I'm missing? Does everybody using Marketplace export the orders and paypal payments, so as to do their accounts? Would really appreciate any words from the wise...

Comment #2

gMaximus CreditAttribution: gMaximus commented 25 July 2012 at 10:45

Really this is closely linked to the question: How to do book keeping/ accounts for ubercart marketplace? Ensuring that the right money goes to the right person...

I've read elsewhere (http://www.ubercart.org/news/nov-03-2009/new_quickbooks_integration_option), for Ubercart, that most people have opted for using Quickbooks. Although this is essentially a commercial offering, I'd be happy to go for it, if it made this problem go away. I just want to launch my site :)

The problem is these systems, I believe, are set up for you the store owner selling product. I can't find any suggestion anywhere that they could deal with the Marketplace set up.

I would love anyone who comes forward with a proven method. I'm now going to spend some time poking around in the database, considering pulling the data out and doing the sums in Excel perhaps... Feels so wrong though...

Comment #3

gMaximus CreditAttribution: gMaximus commented 4 August 2012 at 16:45

So this from above:

2) Edit the order and remove the refunded products and add an order comment. This seems nice because I've noticed that this action puts the products back on sale too.

Pretty happy with how that works after some testing. The website will pay the sellers for June orders at the end of July. This will allow 30 days+ for refunds to go through. Using views, uc_views and table wizard modules, I've been able to create a sold products page, that can be filtered by date for sellers.

However, although you can remove the products from an order, the mp_quote_shipping_rates table doesn't get updated, after applying the revised shipping quote. This means that the admins seller report that ships with Marketplace becomes inaccurate...

Comment #4

gMaximus CreditAttribution: gMaximus commented 5 August 2012 at 17:33

Opened this bug report regarding:

the mp_quote_shipping_rates table doesn't get updated

http://drupal.org/node/1714130

Comment #5

gMaximus CreditAttribution: gMaximus commented 19 November 2012 at 17:09

Unfortunately the idea of editing the order doesn't suit the UK VAT rules (and possibly European rules). It's also become apparent that this issue stems from Ubercart rather than Marketplace.

You see the order represents the VAT Invoice when using Ubercart invoice: http://www.ubercart.org/project/uc_invoice. Therefore it can not be edited under the VAT rules. This is because it is not possible to recover the original invoice as it has been electronically sent out. Instead there should be credit note or supplementary VAT invoice issued against the original invoice showing the details of the refund. Including what product/s was refunded and the amount of VAT. More can be read about this here: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/special-situations/returned-goods.htm#2

My research also uncovered something else. When the Marketplace shipping module saves the amount due to sellers, it does so on a per order > per seller basis. The would present an issue where an order has multiple products from a seller on a order and only some products are to be refunded, where the seller has changed the shipping price for a product since the order was made. It would not be possible to know what is owed to the customer. Really the shipping amounts should be saved on the "order product id" ie per product > per order basis...

I would love anyone to tell me that my conclusions are incorrect. Or if you have found workarounds... This is a real show stopper for me!