Options for Issuing Refunds and Increasing Your Balance

During this challenging time, we want you to know that Xola is here to support you.

1. Store Credit for Cancellations

As customers request to cancel and refund bookings, one great option is to encourage the use of Store Credit for Cancellations. With Store Credit your customers can apply the value of their booking toward a future booking when you resume standard operations or they are able to travel again. Store Credit has the added benefit of allowing your customer to change their plans without impacting your bottom line. When completing the cancel workflow simply select the store credit option. Here is our full article on Store Credit

However, if for any number of reasons you do need to issue refunds in excess of your Xola balance (visible in the top right part of the purchases tab), we have two options to help you maintain available funds to do refunds within Xola.

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2. Increase your payout delay from 1 day to 7 days

If you still have bookings (and income) coming in, simply reducing your payout lag will increase the likelihood of additional funds within your Xola account at any given time to process refunds. Funds will still be deposited on a rolling basis to your account. Once the seven day threshold has been met they will be paid out daily for transactions a week prior. 

Tip: Contact to the support team in product chat or via email to change your payout delay.

3. Add funds to your Refund Reserve Balance

The refund reserve is used to cover for credit card charges you may need to refund. Whenever you process a credit card refund, your Xola account balance is drawn down by the refund amount. If you have a balance that can cover this refund, the refund is processed successfully. However, if your balance is less than the refund amount, the refund will be rejected.

For example, if you had a balance of $100 and are attempting the refund $120, the refund will be rejected because your balance cannot cover the refund amount.

To mitigate against your refunds being rejected, we recommend that you configure a refund reserve that can cover worst case days. Depending on your business, this might mean reserving a day's worth of bookings, or several day's worth of bookings -- this is entirely predicated by the type of business you run and you will be the best judge of what is an appropriate refund reserve.

With no revenue in your Xola Account and with a $0 balance, you are unable to issue refunds. This feature allows you to specify a minimum amount of funds to be held in reserve and withheld from payouts. Xola will find transactions whose amount total up to a value greater than or equal to the amount specified and mark these transactions as being part of the Refund Reserve.

Here is our full article on Refund Reserve. 

4. Add funds to your Xola Balance

You can send funds to Xola that we will add to your Xola Balance so you can issue refunds as soon as funds are received by Xola and added to your account This is generally 2-3 days depending on bank cutoffs and other factors.
Simply go to Report>Payouts> and click on the Top Up button at the top. 
 
  1. Update your Refund Reserve to an amount greater than the funds you intend to send so that they do not get paid out in the subsequent payout.

    Note: If you do not update your Refund Reserve and submit funds to Xola, this will be completed automatically for you when the funds are received.

  2. Send Funds via ACH or Wire Transfer, instruction on how to send will be presented
  3. Wait for the funds to become available.

    Note: You will receive an email to your Primary email when the fund become available in your account.

  4. Once you are finished completing the refunds you can reduce your Refund Reserve back to "$0" to payout any additional funds you no longer wish to hold.

Note: Our bank assesses $5 for ACH deposits and $8 for Wire Transfer deposits. Please check with your bank to understand any fees they may also assess. The amount deposited into your Xola account will be less these fees.

Self-service option for Top Ups is for US based accounts only.  International accounts can reachout to support about instructions on how to add funds to your balance. Email support@xola.com with any questions.

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