CiviCRM Refunds, Partial Refunds and Partial Payments

I am Tahir Ramzan, pursuing Masters in Computer Science at Virtual University of Pakistan. I am working on refunds, partial refunds and partial payments development for CiviCRM. Parvez Saleh and Joe Murray are mentoring this project.

Refunds and Partial Refunds:

Often, we need to tackle situation where one needs to make partial or full refunds. After this project users will be able to make refunds with friendly user interface and proper database records.

Concerns:

• How to represent an administrative fee for refund? Who will pay this, buyer or seller?
• How to link the refund with the original contribution?
• Which method to use for processing refunds?  Check, payment processor or both.

Partial Payments:

Partial payments on the other hand need to be done when someone pays a part of payment contribution in installments. This will be very useful for CiviCRM users for multi-purpose tasks. By developing this project, not only the users of CiviCRM but also the end users will be benefited and CiviCRM contributions will witness a significant increase.

Concerns:

• How to represent an administrative fee for the partial payment? Who will pay this, buyer or seller?
• Pre-defined amount installments and buyer defined installments/ variable amounts
• Handling taxes, penalties, markup and administration fees

Key deliverables:

• Refunds API
• Partial Payments API
• Refunds UI Extension
• Partial Payments UI Extension

Community Feedback:

I am looking for valuable feedback form community which is vital to make this project successful and useful. Here are links to Forum Thread and Wiki Page of the project. Kindly share your thoughts.