Java – how to add to BigDecimal

I have the following function, which iterates an array and calls a method on each 'return' object, which returns a BigDecimal containing some values, such as 20.45:

private String getTransactionTotals(Refund[] refunds) {

    BigDecimal total = new BigDecimal(0.00);

    /*
     *  Itterates over all the refund objects and adds
     *  their amount payables together to get a total 
     */
    for ( Refund refund : refunds ) {

        total.add(refund.getAmountPayable());           

    }

    total = total.setScale(2,RoundingMode.CEILING);
    return total.toString();
}

The problem is that it always returns' 0.00 ' I know that the array I passed is not null, and the value returned by the 'getamountpayable()' function is not null or equal to 0 I don't know if I've been staring at this too long. I missed the obvious. Some help will be very grateful

PS – 'getamountpay()' returns a value of type BigDecimal

Solution

You need to use the return value of add because BigDecimal is immutable So you should:

total = total.add(refund.getAmountPayable());

(personally, if this method is called a plus sign instead of adding, it will be more obvious. But it doesn't matter.)