#gigstar-charge-refund
heavy pendant
@icy pewter hello! What's the question? Also might be worth asking it in one message in the future since I could have replied already :p
icy pewter
Been working on some rate & concurrency limiters, so just got around to charging a bulk set of "tickets" (using separate Charge & Transfer), then shortly after "cancelling" the event and issuing refunds. I expected my balance to be increased by the charges LESS the Stripe fees, and my balance to be decreased by the full amount of the payments - thus making my balance negative (not really; I topped-up the balance by enough to cover the anticipated fee so I didn't have to deal with available balances), but...
the balance increased by hte full amount of the charges, and decreased by the full amount of the charges (I think) to show no net difference - but I may have not quite done it correctly (I should have typed this out bvefore contacting you)
But to confirm : it should only added the amount after fees, correct?
(I'm a tad wordy to ask in main channel)
heavy pendant
your understanding is correct if you are a user with default pricing. You might not be :p
icy pewter
I am - nothing special about my account
heavy pendant
this explains how to see our fee, what do you see?
Otherwise do you have a Charge id ch_123?
icy pewter
momentito, although I'm pretty sure this is my fault
pi_3KliOHAJ38Y8gLJy0PNz68Gg - working down to the charge
heavy pendant
nah that's all good that's what I needed, looking
so yeah you have the default pricing/logic and the fee is taken and you get a net amount after the fee
icy pewter
k. Me moving too fast. Imma clear balances and redo transactions set - set up an event, set up tickets ready to be charged when event "occurs", charge 'em all, check balance, refund 'em all, check balance again. Probable do a top-up just to avoid the negative balance. You can assume it worked; I'll poke again if there's an issue but I don't expect it.
(my front end allows me to be event presenter, event venue and attendee all on the same SPA, so the loop can be confusing)
heavy pendant
sounds good!
icy pewter
Hokay then - for the most part, the balances showed up correctly - payments less fees when charged; added a top-up to "future refund" to bring balance up to full value; issued the refunds - which of course returned the full face value - but so far, the platform balance shows negative - it didn't seem to pull from the "reserve" automatically - is there some API call I need to do to make that happen?
heavy pendant
I'm not sure I follow what you call the reserve and what you are referring to
icy pewter
When adding a top-up, the options are to connect accounts, or to negative balances and/or to cover future refunds and chargebacks. I chose the latter; the balances dashboard shows said amount in "Future refunds or disputes or negative balance"
I expected the negative balance generated when the refund occurred to pull from said "Future refunds or disputes or negative balance"
I s'pose I could screenshot if you want
I guess it's a tad of a dashboard question (not appropriate to here), but leaves me wondering what would happen live
heavy pendant
yeah I don't know much about the Dashboard flows
really in Test mode use https://stripe.com/docs/testing#available-balance instead
icy pewter
Step-by-step:
heavy pendant
sorry you've lost me
icy pewter
Created 20 x $28 charges
full charges were $560; balance was $537.80
added a top-up of $22.20 to try to bring up to full face value, $560
icy pewter
used add-to-balance
heavy pendant
sure then don't do that at all
re-do what I said: use the test card for instant funds
icy pewter
The test card is for charges, and will still only affect balance by amount AFTER fees
icy pewter
I'm being a stickler here because I'm simulating possible future flows - I need to maintain very careful attributed fund flows
heavy pendant
it's all Test mode. I don't really grasp what part you want but ultimately you won't use the topup flow in production so don't use it in Test mode
icy pewter
I won't? So you're predicting my available balance will always be larger than the amounts refunded and/or disputed?
Cancelling and refunding an entire event will be fairly unusual, but certainly not rare
heavy pendant
you should be maintaining a balance on the account to cover this. Having to rush a topup to make up for the negative balance and delaying all refunds is unlikely to be what you want
icy pewter
Trickier than it sounds for my use-case. ultimately hundreds of events per-day, for hundreds of event venues, each event with 10 to 200 individual ticket sales. Can you predict the amount at risk?
heavy pendant
ultimately, even if you use Topup it's not really related to what you were testing
I'd recommend just ignoring Topup or not trying to net out to exactly 0 in real time, it doesn't really work this way
icy pewter
I'm quite sure my CFO will disagree with you - leaving balances idle is not a strong financial decision
Yes, I have confirmed that amounts of charges, fees and refunds ballance, real-time, but I do have to consider how I will maintain proper, attributable cash flows. Each event, presenter and venue has to be accounted for along with COGS of the various Stripe fees, both charges and Connected Account fees
heavy pendant
yeah I'm sorry you're using words I don't really understand
icy pewter
COGS - Cost of Sales
heavy pendant
I can tell you for sure that platforms in your case 100% keep funds in their platform account. Otherwise it takes days to refund customer after funding your account
icy pewter
well, Cost of Goods Sold, same thing
heavy pendant
I'm a coder, I focus on code. The rest I don't really know much about/can't tell you how to design your business/finance
but my point stays the same: this is all purely test mode, you want to confirm you net out to $0. You don't need the topup flow
icy pewter
so open question still remains - there seems to be a reserve, generated from Top-Ups, that "should" be used to cover negative balances. How do I verify that this actually occurs?
pure, technical question
My goal is all of this should be automated
And yes, I am both creating the full codebase, website, payments etc etc while creating the business flows.
heavy pendant
unfortunately you'll need to talk to support if you want to discuss topup and reserves and things like this
icy pewter
That I can do. Didn't know they were that unusual a part of the flow.
Thanks for being a willing ear! Helps to talk things out.
heavy pendant
Sure thing!
icy pewter
btw, there is a note on https://stripe.com/docs/add-funds that the shift of balance from "future refunds" reserve occurs end-of day
heavy pendant
yeah I'm not sure that's true in Test mode but I haven't played with this one much
icy pewter
There's couple such things don't seem to be live in Test Mode - I have yet to notice a "Connect Account" charge, for example
heavy pendant
correct