About Adjustments

An adjustment is a transaction that modifies the balance in a customer account. In the Galileo Program API, you can make an adjustment that credits or debits your customer’s account using the Create Adjustment endpoint. Some adjustments are made systematically by Galileo. An adjustment can also be made by an external entity, for instance, when a financial institution makes an inbound debit request to move funds out of your customer’s account.

This guide provides an overview of adjustments and describes the endpoints and tools for creating, reversing, and viewing adjustments in the Galileo system.

Adjustment use cases

These are some common use cases for adjustments.

• Fee reimbursement — If your customer incurs a fee that should be reimbursed, you can create an adjustment that credits the fee amount to the customer’s account. For example, you can create an adjustment to reimburse an ATM withdrawal fee. (Depending on your setup, you can use the Reverse Fee endpoint instead.)
• Non-card based account debit — Create adjustments to debit funds for transactions made without a card, such as bill pay, account to account, and outbound ACH transactions.
• Dispute resolution — If your customer successfully disputes a transaction, you can create an adjustment to credit the funds for the dispute to your customer’s account.
• Rewards and third-party integrations — Create adjustments for regular transactions that are established at the program level that credit or debit external accounts based on daily aggregates (for example, loading a debit card or sending funds using a third-party acquiring service).

Payments vs. adjustments

In the Galileo system, there are several differences between a payment made with the Create Payment endpoint and an adjustment made with the Create Adjustment endpoint.

• Direction of funds — The Create Payment endpoint moves funds only into a customer’s account while the Create Adjustment endpoint moves funds either into or out of a customer’s account.
• Velocity limits — The Create Payment endpoint applies velocity limits to transactions while Create Adjustment usually does not. Typically, the Create Adjustment endpoint is used to make administrative adjustments for an account balance, which may mean that velocity limits should not be applied.
• Account status — The Create Payment endpoint takes account and card status into consideration when a payment is posted. The Create Adjustment always ignores the account or card status because administrative activities may need to be performed on cancelled accounts or cards.
• Hold days — The Create Payment endpoint accounts for pending hold days, which you can update with the Update Payment endpoint. The Create Adjustment endpoint does not account for hold days. Adjustments are immediately inserted into the account without significant delay.

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Note

See the Creating a Payment guide for more information about creating, reversing, and updating payments.

Reversing payments and adjustments

You can reverse a payment or an adjustment using the Create Adjustment endpoint. Galileo recommends reversing payments and adjustments in this manner because the type field in Create Adjustment is populated to match the original payment or adjustment type, and results in a true reversal of the funds.

• To reverse an adjustment made with the Create Adjustment endpoint, send a Create Adjustment request to move funds in the opposite direction from the original adjustment (either debit or credit).
• To reverse a payment made with the Create Payment endpoint, send a Create Adjustment request to debit the funds for the payment out of the account.

It is possible to reverse a payment with the Reverse Payment endpoint, and to reverse an adjustment with the Reverse Adjustment endpoint, but these methods are not preferred.

Summary of payments and adjustments

This table summarizes the differences between payment and adjustment endpoints.

Adjustment endpoints

This table summarizes adjustment endpoints in the Galileo system. The links in this table point to API reference documentation and to related sections in this guide.

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Note

When initiating a transaction with the Program API, the transactionId from the API request is copied to the external transaction ID field of all transactions that result from the request. The external transaction ID is available in the responses to transaction-retrieval Program API requests as external_trans_id, in the Posted Transactions RDFRDF - Raw data file. Once per day Galileo sends you RDFs that contain a list of all of your previous day's transactions and all of your current customers. Compare the RDFs with your own records and if there are discrepancies, treat the RDFs as authoritative. as EXTERNAL TRANSACTION ID, and in the Events API webhook messages as ext_trans_id.

Create Adjustment endpoint

Use the Create Adjustment endpoint to modify the balance of a customer account. You can use this endpoint to either credit or debit the account.

This table describes parameters that are specific to the Create Adjustment endpoint.

Reverse Adjustment endpoint

You can use the Reverse Adjustment endpoint to reverse an adjustment made with the Create Adjustment endpoint, however, for most adjustment reversals, Galileo recommends using the Create Adjustment endpoint instead. See Reversing payments and adjustments for more information.

This table describes parameters that are specific to the Reverse Adjustment endpoint.

Viewing adjustments

You can retrieve a record of adjustments and adjustment reversals using the Get Account Overview, Get Transaction History, and Get All Transaction History endpoints. These endpoints return a comprehensive list of transactions, including adjustments.

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Note

There is a delay of several seconds before an adjustment appears in a customer’s transaction history and account overview.

Adjustment workflows

The workflows in this section provide an overview of the process for creating and reversing adjustments.

Create adjustment workflow

This flowchart shows the logical progression of the Create Adjustment endpoint. The actual sequence of events in the Galileo system may vary.

1. You send the Create Adjustment request.
2. Galileo performs preliminary checks. Failures return the status codes shown in the diagram. Consult Create Adjustment status codes in this guide for next steps.
3. Galileo verifies that the transaction ID is an integer. If it is not, Galileo returns status: 409-01. An integer is required so that if there is a later call to the Reverse Adjustment endpoint, the transaction ID is an exact match.
4. Galileo verifies that the transaction ID is 23 characters or less. If it exceeds 23 characters, Galileo returns status: 409-08.
5. If debitCreditIndicator is set to C, Galileo moves funds into the account, returns status: 0 and sends the BADJ: adj event if it is configured.
6. If debitCreditIndicator is set to D, Galileo checks whether there are sufficient funds in the account.
7. If there are sufficient funds, Galileo moves funds out of the account, returns status: 0 and sends the BADJ: adj event.

If there are not sufficient funds, Galileo performs the following checks:

1. Galileo checks if the product is either configured to allow a negative balance (ALWNB is set to Y) or if there is a corporate finance tree to handle insufficient funds. If either are true, Galileo moves funds out of the account, returns status: 0 and sends the BADJ: adj event.
2. If the product does not allow a negative balance and overdraft withdrawals should not be attempted, Galileo returns status: 409-07.
3. Galileo verifies that the product is configured for overdraft. If not, Galileo returns status: 409-03.
4. Galileo verifies that the account holder is participating in overdraft. If not, Galileo returns status: 409-02.
5. Galileo verifies that the overdraft account has sufficient funds to cover the adjustment. If not, Galileo returns status: 409-04.
6. Galileo verifies that the overdraft account is configured for adjustments. If not, Galileo returns status: 409-06.
7. Galileo verifies that funds from the overdraft account were transferred successfully. If not, Galileo returns status: 409-05.
8. Galileo sends response status: 0 and creates the adjustment by crediting or debiting the account.
9. Galileo sends Transaction Events webhook BADJ: adj.

Reverse adjustment workflow

This flowchart shows the logical progression of the Reverse Adjustment endpoint. The actual sequence of events in the Galileo system may vary.

1. You send the Reverse Adjustment request.
2. Galileo performs preliminary checks. Failures return the status codes shown in the diagram. Consult Reverse Adjustment status codes in this guide for next steps.
3. Galileo verifies that the amount to be reversed matches the original transaction amount. If not, Galileo returns status: 447-01.
4. Galileo sends response status: 0 and reverses the adjustment by crediting or debiting the account.
5. Galileo sends Transaction Events webhook BADJ: adj.

Events API webhook for adjustments

When an adjustment is made for an account balance (either credit or debit), the BADJ: adj event message is triggered if it is configured. There are several endpoints that trigger this event:

• Create Adjustment
• Reverse Adjustment
• Create Account Transfer
• Reverse Account Transfer
• Reverse Payment

The BADJ: adj event is also triggered by internal and external processes that credit or debit an account. Depending on your configuration, this may include:

• Adjustments made via CSTCST - Customer Service Tool. Software that the Galileo customer service team uses, which is also available to providers, to view customers and their accounts.
• Adjustments made by internal processes
• Inbound merchant credit
• Fees and reimbursements
• Withdrawals from an overdraft account
• Authorization reversals
• ACH returns
• Outbound ACH credit
• Bill pay transactions

Status codes

The tables in this section list status codes returned by adjustment endpoints.

Create Adjustment status codes

This table describes status codes returned by the Create Adjustment endpoint and any next steps to take.

Reverse Adjustment status codes

This section describes status codes returned by the Reverse Adjustment endpoint and any next steps to take.

Using the CST for adjustments

You can use the CSTCST - Customer Service Tool. Software that the Galileo customer service team uses, which is also available to providers, to view customers and their accounts. to create and view adjustments for an account. The following are actions that you can take in the CST that will result in an adjustment.

• Create an adjustment from the Insert Adjustments page.
• Mark a return from the Payment History page.
• Initiate or recover an account chargeoff from the Account Info page.
• Process a dispute by issuing temporary credit, or by releasing or reversing a transaction from the Adjustment History page.

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Note

Some CST controls may not be available for all users depending on your administrator’s Roles and Rights settings. A user must have permission to create and modify specific adjustment types and to set adjustment limits. No adjustments are allowed until an adjustment limit is set.

This table describes controls for creating and viewing adjustments in the CST.

Galileo setup