If you gather a refundable deposit from your clients, this tutorial is for you! In this tutorial we will outline two suggested processes that can be followed to gather a refundable deposit from your client and how to issue a refund for this amount following their event.

Locate the event that needs to be charged the refundable deposit. This can be done by searching for the event via the search magnifying glass in the upper left-hand corner of Releventful, or by locating the event from the calendar or sales pipeline. Edit the event to be brought to the event edit screen.

From the event edit screen, click on the “Invoices” tab. If you already have an existing invoice, it can be opened by clicking on the existing invoice hyperlink on this page.

If you need to create a new invoice, select the “Add New” button, and select either proposal or invoice to start the process.

For more information on the creation of a proposal and invoice and the options available to you, please review our helpful resources and tutorials at help.releventful.com.

In today’s example, I will be editing an existing invoice. On the quick-close invoice screen that appears, click on the invoice tile. To charge the client for a refundable deposit, select the blue plus icon and select “Line Item” from the drop-down list that appears.

Fill out the fields in the pop-up window that appears to indicate that this is a refundable deposit. You can set this as a flat rate amount or a percentage. Once the required fields have been populated, select “Save” in the lower left-hand corner to save this as a line item to the proposal.

Back on the invoice, you will see the refundable deposit line item on the list and included in the total amount due.

The second piece to this is to create a payment request for this amount. You can choose to keep the refundable deposit included in the existing payment requests; however, it will be easier to issue a refund for this specific amount if there is an associated payment request for this set amount.

To set up this payment request, select the “Payment” tile from the quick-close invoice screen. Select “Add” in the upper right-hand corner and select “Add Payment” from the list that appears.

Scroll down the page and enter the refundable deposit amount into the payment amount field.

Set the due date, configure the payment notification details and any other applicable settings in this pop-up window. Once complete, select the “Save” button in the lower left-hand corner of the pop-up window to create the payment request.

Following the event, to issue a refund for this deposit. Simply open the payment request by clicking on it from the list and selecting the “Refund” button within the payment request.

After the refund is issued, open the invoice and remove the line item for the refundable deposit.

There is a second workflow that can be followed to charge a client a refundable deposit and issue the refund following the event. In the same way as described, navigate to the “Invoices” tab of the event edit screen.

In this workflow, create a second invoice that holds just the refundable deposit amount and keep this separate from the original event invoice. Select the “Add New” button and select add invoice to start the process.

On the quick-close invoice screen that appears, click on the invoice tile. To charge the client for a refundable deposit, select the blue plus icon and select “Line Item” from the drop-down list that appears.

Fill out the fields in the pop-up window that appears to indicate that this is a refundable deposit. You can set this as a flat rate amount or a percentage. Once the required fields have been populated, select “Save” in the lower left-hand corner to save this as a line item to the proposal.

Back on the invoice, you will see the refundable deposit line item on the list and included in the total amount due.

Next, open the payment tile and create the payment request for the refundable deposit amount in the same way described earlier in this tutorial.

Having a separate invoice for just the refundable deposit will keep the deposit away from the other elements of the event invoice.

The client will now have two invoices linked to their event and two invoices will appear on their “Pay & E-Sign” tab.

After the event and the refundable deposit has been refunded to the client, you can proceed to delete the second invoice if you would like to remove this data from your records.

We hope that this tutorial has been helpful in explaining how to charge a client a refundable deposit and how to issue the refund following their event.