SchoolMoney: Insufficient funds for online refunds

Scope: Advice and guidance for understanding ‘insufficient funds’ messages while processing online refunds.

Instructions:

While processing online refunds to parents, you may see the following message: “You have Insufficient Funds in your Holding Account…”. This means not enough money has been received for that BACS account so far this week.

As we do not have access to your bank account(s), the refund must come out of your online takings before they are processed for banking at the end of the week.

To resolve this error, you will need to either wait until parents have paid enough money for you to refund it online or refund it by cash / cheque.

Your system freezes your online takings at 23:59:59 on Sunday night, to be banked.  The holding account then resets to zero for a new week. This means you will be more likely to have available funds later in the week (once more parents have paid).

Checking your Holding Account

If you wish to check your available funds, you can run a Money Received Report as described below.

To refund, you must have received enough online income this week, for the bank account and BACS reference linked to the Payment Type you’re trying to refund from.

If you are unsure of this, click into the Admin Tab and go to BACS Information / Local Authority. Make a note of the BACS reference and bank account details used for the payment type you wish to refund (E.G: Dinners, Clubs, School Trip, etc)

  • Select the Reports Tab
  • Open the Money Received Report
  • Tick the box for Show Transaction Breakdown
  • Click on the Filter Button
  • Set Payment Method to All Online Payments
  • Set Account to the BACS Reference that you need to refund from
  • Set Parent Paid on to Date Range
  • Set the Start Date to the Monday of the Current Week
  • Set the End Date to the Sunday of the Current Week
  • Press OK
  • Check the Total Received at the top right corner.  This is the amount you currently have in your ‘holding account’ for that BACS reference.

Once the Total Received is greater than the amount you wish to refund, you will be able to process the refund back to the parent.

You can check the report periodically until the end of the week, as the total received will increase as more parents pay.

Please note: If any transactions in the report show as Payment Method: Paypoint, they will not count towards the holding account, you will need to manually reduce the total accordingly.