Cancel a Placeholder

Steps to cancel a Placeholder

1 Cancel linked Delegates
2 Cancel the Placeholder
3 Check the financial records
4 Optional - Manage refunds

Related Helpguide Pages

If your customer no longer wishes to have their Placeholder places reserved on your Course, learn how to cancel Placeholders on your Courses to free up the places for future bookings!

Cancellations happen, and when they do it is important to get them processed as quickly as possible so that the places on your Course are freed up for your other customers.

If your customer is cancelling a Placeholder booking, it really is no different! You will first cancel any Delegates that have been assigned to the Placeholder, and then cancel the Placeholder itself, this process will automatically take care of refunds and credit notes for you too!

Follow this page to learn the steps to cancel a Placeholder on a Course.

Cancel linked Delegates

Before you can cancel the Placeholder booking you must first remove the Delegates that have been assigned to the spaces

Cancelling the Delegate(s)

This step will show you how to cancel the Delegates from the Course, follow this step to ensure any of your automated Cancellation Workflows send to the Delegates, you can skip this step if you do not need to send them a Cancellation email automatically.

Depending on whether you are cancelling a Placeholder on a Classroom or Webinar Course, open the relevant Courses DataGrid from the Main Navigation Menu
Once you have opened your Course DataGrid, you can search for your Course using the Search bar at the top right-hand side and your DataGrid filters
Right-click on your selected Course and click the ‘Placeholder' from the context menu
This will open the ‘Placeholders’ DataGrid showing all the Placeholders on this Course
If you do not currently have ‘ID’ included as a column in your Placeholders DataGrid, use the ‘Change columns’ option to include it
Once you have Placeholder ‘ID’ included in your DataGrid, make a note of the ID number of the Placeholder that you want to cancel

Click the ‘Delegates' tab in the Course menu on the left-hand side
This will open the ‘Delegates’ DataGrid showing the Delegates on this Course, check that you do not have any filters applied to this DataGrid that could be hiding Delegates that you need to see
Add the ‘Placeholder ID’ column to the list of Delegates, then identify all of the Delegates that have the same Placeholder ID as the ID number you noted from the Placeholders DataGrid
Select each Delegate that has the Placeholder ID, then open the Bulk Edit tool at the top of the DataGrid
Bulk Edit the Delegate(s) status from ‘Booked’ to ‘Cancelled' and click ‘Save’ to apply your change

Removing the cancelled Delegate(s) from the Placeholder

This step will show you how to remove the cancelled Delegate from the Placeholder Place

Click on ‘Placeholders' in the Course menu on the left-hand side
This will open the ‘Placeholder’ DataGrid and show all Placeholder places available
Right-click on the Placeholder Place to expose the menu and click ‘Assign to Placeholder’
This will open the ‘Maintain Placeholder’ pop-up
Next to each Delegate name, click the 'X' to remove them
Click the ‘Save & Close’ button

Cancel the Placeholder

Once you have removed the Delegates you will then be able to cancel the placeholder, this will set the status of the Placeholder to cancelled without removing the booking completely so you can reference it at a later date

This step will show you how to cancel the Placeholder record

Right-click your Placeholder to view the context menu options, and click on the ‘Cancel’ option
This will open the ‘Cancel Placeholder’ pop-up
Here it will give the Placeholder details and allow you to enter any notes relating to the cancellation.
If the Placeholder has already been Invoiced, then there will be the option for you to add in a Cancellation Fee within the ‘Charge’ option
At the bottom of the pop, there is a tick box which is labelled ‘Keep Refund Local’
1. Check this option if the customer’s refund has already been issued outside of the Platform, this means you can record the refund within your accessplanit platform without actually refunding the payment
2. Leave this option unchecked to process a refund through the original payment’s Payment Gateway

Click ‘Cancel’ to complete the cancellation

Check the financial records

The final step of the Placeholder cancellation process is to check that any refunds, credits, and cancellation fees have been correctly logged

To check the financial records of the cancellation, you will follow these steps:

Review the Invoice for the Placeholder
Review the Invoice for the cancellation fee

Review the Invoice for the Placeholder

This step is only applicable if the Placeholder had been Invoiced before their place on the Course was cancelled, it will take you through reviewing the original Invoice and its transactions

To access the Invoice for the Placeholder, click on either the Invoice Reference or the Invoice ID for the cancelled Placeholder from the Placeholder DataGrid to view the Invoice shortcuts for this Placeholder
Click on the ‘Edit Invoice’ option from the context menu
This will open the Invoices Details page where you can view the Invoice
The Invoice for the Placeholder should have a Credited value on it that matches the value of the Placeholder
Click on the ‘Transactions’ tab from the menu on the left
This will open the ‘Transactions’ DataGrid showing all payments and refunds for this Invoice
1. If there was a payment made against the Invoice ahead of the cancellation, there will now be a matching refund transaction for it for the same value
2. There should also be a Credit Note for the full value of the Delegate to balance off this amount from the Invoice
3. If there was a cancellation fee applied during the cancellation process, both the original payment and the refund transactions will have been deducted from the amount of the fee, the customer should not have received a full refund as a part of this should have been used to pay off their cancellation fee

Review the Invoice for the cancellation fee

This step is only applicable if you applied a cancelled fee, it will take you through checking the new Invoice generated for the fee

To access the Invoice for the cancellation fee, open the Invoices DataGrid and use the filters to find Invoices for this customer
Identify the Invoice that has been generated for their cancellation fee
If the Placeholder’s Invoice had been paid, and part of that payment has been used to pay off the cancellation fee instead of being refunded to them, the cancellation fee Invoice should have a status of ‘Completed’ and an amount outstanding of 0

If the Placeholder’s Invoice was outstanding before the cancellation, then the new Invoice for the cancellation fee will now also be outstanding

Optional - Manage refunds

The cancellation process will automatically process refunds for you, however if you need to process a refund for your outside of the cancellation process you can also issue refunds for Placeholders manually.

To refund a Placeholder via an invoice, you will follow these steps:

To find and view an Invoice, you will follow these steps:

Access, filter, and search your Invoices DataGrid
View the Invoice

Accessing your Invoice

This step will show you how to view your invoice via the Placeholder DataGrid

Click ‘Placeholders’ from the Course menu on the left-hand side
This will show you the ‘Placeholder’ DataGrid
Click the column button in the top right-hand side of the DataGrid
A pop-up will appear with the list of current columns listed within the DataGrid
Click the '+' button to add a new column
Use the drop down to search for the column ‘Related Invoice ID’
Select the column
Click ‘Apply’
This will now add the column to the DataGrid
If the column has an ID number, then an Invoice has been generated
Click on the Invoice Reference Number and select ‘Edit Invoice’
This will open the Invoice for you to view

Find the payment transaction

This step will take you to a view of all the transactions recorded against this Invoice

From your view of the Invoice, click the Transactions tab
This will take you to a view of all payment and refund Transactions against this Invoice
From this DataGrid, identify which Transaction requires the refund
If you do not have visibility of the information you need to see about the payment on the Transactions DataGrid, you can adjust the columns included
1. Remove any columns that you do not need to see in your DataGrid by right-clicking on them and clicking the ‘Remove Column’ option
2. To add additional columns to your DataGrid to view more information for each Transaction, click on the ‘Change Columns’ button at the top right of the DataGrid results
3. Use the ‘+' button to add new columns in and click on the 'Apply’ button
4. You will now see the information you need, within your Transactions DataGrid

Process the refund

This step will take you through the refund process

Once you have identified which payment Transaction requires a refund, right-click on it to view the context menu options for this Transaction
Click on the ‘Refund’ context menu option
This will open the ‘Refund Payment’ window, review the details in the top half of the page
Scroll down to the Refund section of the window
If you are refunding a Payment Gateway payment (such as a Stripe, WorldPay, or Opayo payment) then you will see an option to ‘Keep the Refund’ local
1. If the customer has already had their payment refunded through your payment gateway or through your accounting team, and you simply need to record the refund in your accessplanit platform, check this box to record the refund on your accessplanit platform (locally) only
2. If the customer has not yet had their money returned and you would like to refund the payment back to them now, leave this box unchecked
It is best practice to select which items from the Invoice the refund relates to, this is so that any Credit Notes generated from this process have a reference to these items
If you will not be refunding the full amount to the customer, enter the amount to be refunded into the Amount To Refund box
Finally, indicate if a Credit Note needs to be automatically created for this refund
1. If you are not expecting the customer to pay the amount that is being refunded at a later date, check the 'Create a credit note’ box, this will generate a Credit Note for the refunded amount and allocate this to the Invoice to balance it and show that no payment is due on the Invoice
2. If you are expecting the customer to pay the amount at a later date (for example their cheque bounced and they will be making payment another way), do not check the 'Create a credit note’ box, this will leave the Invoice with an outstanding balance
Click the ‘Refund’ button to complete the refund
You will be taken back to the Transactions DataGrid where you will be able to see the original payment, the refund, and (if you selected the option) the Credit Note assigned to balance off the outstanding amount on the Invoice