Refunding

Knowledge Base Invoices
1

You can do full or partial refunds and with merchandise do things like restock it or create an RMA request.

What it Does

  • Allows you to refund money back to a credit/debit card (WorldPay Payments and Authorize.net only).
  • Generates a refund invoice listing everything refunded.
  • Keeps a nice reference between the invoices so you have a clear history of the refund taking place when looking back at this customer.
  • You can say what should happen to the inventory items(s)—send to Returns module, put back in stock, start an RMA, etc.

What it Doesn't Do

  • Allow you to refund TO a credit/debit card if the original payment wasn't a credit/debit card.
  • Allow you to refund back to ACH, PayPal, Square or Stripe platforms. We will cover how to handle those.

Table of Contents

Issue a refund
Refund overpayments
Void Authorize.net transaction due to error
Refund invoices with deposits

 

Issue a refund

  1. Open a paid invoice.
  2. In the upper right, click Actions > Refund (you need the right permissions to do this). This takes you to the Start Refund screen.
  3. Enter the Refund Quantity of each line item that you are refunding back to the customer. Leave it blank on items you are not refunding.

     
  4. If any items have a serial number, click Select serials, select the correct one(s), and click Ok!
  5. For inventory items, you can optionally click the Action dropdown to do something other than Pending.
    • Pending is the default. It will send them to the Returns Manager to deal with later.
    • Restock will put the item back in stock and adjust its inventory quantity accordingly.
    • RMA Request will send the item to the Returns Manager with a status of RMA sent—meaning you sent an RMA to the vendor and are now waiting for the vendor to approve the RMA so you can return the item to them.
    • Breakage indicates the item was broken or defective. The inventory quantity does not change because the item is gone.
    • Add to Return is a pending return to which you can add the item.
  6. If you are doing a partial refund, follow these steps. Note: If you are only refunding some of the items and entered the appropriate quantities, you do not need to use this feature; it will automatically calculate the correct prices and taxes. This feature is for refunding something other than the items on the invoice. If you want to give a partial refund on a specific item on the invoice, then leave the quantity blank on that item, otherwise it will refund both the full price of the item and the Price you enter here.
    1. Click Partial Refund.
    2. Enter the Reason to refund.
    3. Enter the Price—the amount you are refunding. Make sure to only enter the numeric amount. Do not type a currency symbol such as $ or £, nor a comma for amounts greater than 1,000—just type 1000 instead.
    4. Turn on the Taxable checkbox if appropriate. This will automatically calculate the tax on the entire Price you enter.
    5. Note that the 1 to the right of Taxable indicates a Quantity of 1 for this partial refund item, and it cannot be changed.
  7. The Payment method dropdown will default to the original method used by the customer. See notes on some of the various methods below and change it if needed, or if you want to use a different method for your own reasons.

     
    • ACH: We do not support refunds via ACH. You can leave this as the refund payment method, but will then need to login to the ACH platform and make the actual refund there.
    • Credit Card: We only support refunding to Worldpay or Authorize.net at this time. For Stripe, you can leave this as the refund payment method, but will then need to issue the refund in Stripe's dashboard.
    • PayPal, Square: This will indicate you refunded the customer via that method, but you will need to issue the refund via PayPal or Square manually.
    • Store Credit: This will add the refund amount in the form of store credit to the customer's account for their future use.
  8. In the Check Number/Reference Number, you can put the refund reason. If you are refunding by check, this field gets populated with the customer's check number they paid with. Unless you are giving them back their original check, change it to your refund check number you are giving to them.
  9. Click Begin Refund.
  10. Now you are shown the original amount, and the new refund amount to make sure they are correct. Click Finalize Refund if all is well, otherwise click Cancel, in which case you will need to go through the entire process again.
     
  11. Review the refund details, then click Continue.
  12. You will be taken to the refund invoice, as shown below.

     
    • There is a link to the invoice you refunded (1407 in the example above), and a Returns link that takes you to the Returns and RMA screen to process any Pending and/or RMA Requests you made.
    • You will see the items you refunded which are the same as on the original invoice, but with negative quantities and amounts.
  13. If you refunded the customer with store credit, you can click their name to go to their account and see it displayed.

 

Refund overpayments

If someone makes an overpayment for one or more invoices, this will result in a store credit. Authorize.net users may see this error when this happens: "You attempted to apply more than the payment amount - we didn't block the payment, but it was not applied." You cannot just delete the store credit, so here is how to refund the overage.

Suppose the invoice amount is $10 and the person paid $100, which results in a store credit of $90. We will call this invoice A and payment A and use amounts specific to this example, so adjust as needed to your situation.

A. Create an invoice for the overage

  1. Create an invoice for that customer. We'll call this invoice B.
  2. In the Line Items section, click Add Manual Item.
  3. Enter a bogus product name and enter a price of 90 (the overage).
  4. Set Tax to No.
  5. Click Create Line Item.

B. Apply the store credit to the overage

  1. Scroll to the top of the invoice and click Take Payment.
  2. To the right of "Customer Credit Balance (from Payments/Refunds): $90.00" click Apply.
  3. It should show that payment amount by Invoice B. Click Apply Payment.
  4. Now it will show the entire $100 payment as applying to invoices A and B.

C. Refund the overage

  1. Under the Invoice column, click the one for Invoice B.
  2. In the upper right, click Actions > Refund.
  3. For Refund Quantity, enter 1.
  4. Change the Payment Method to something like Other or Cash.
  5. Click Begin Refund.
  6. Click Finalize Refund.
  7. Click Continue. This will create a refund invoice that references invoice B.

D. Give the refund to the customer

If the customer paid with a credit card, you will need to login to your payment gateway and directly refund the overage there. Otherwise, use whatever payment method you wish to refund them, such as cash or check.

Void Authorize.net transaction due to error

If you receive this message—"The refund could not be completed for the following reason: The referenced transaction does not meet the criteria for issuing a credit"—it's because the transaction has not been picked up by Authorize.net yet (that can take up to 26 hours), but you can just void the transaction rather than proceeding with the refund.

Head to the payment page itself, and down on the lower left, click the Void Payment button. It will be visible for approximately 24 hours after the payment is accepted.

 

Refund invoices with deposits

Invoices with deposits get created from tickets. First, a deposit invoice is created with a deposit line item and corresponding payment. Second, a work invoice gets created with a deposit line item for the negative amount paid, and then the labor and/or product line items.

Regardless of whether or not you will refund the deposit, start with the work invoice. See the Issue a refund section for full details on all the steps. The main difference here is that you do not enter a Refund Quantity for the deposit line item (step 3 below).

  1. Open the work invoice with the labor and/or products on it. This will have a higher invoice number than the deposit invoice. In the below example on the ticket, you would click 1039.

     
  2. In the upper right, click Actions > Refund. This takes you to the Start Refund page.
  3. Leave the Refund Quantity blank for the Deposit line item, even if you will be refunding it.

     
  4. Enter a Refund Quantity for all the items (except the deposit) you will be refunding.
  5. If you are refunding items with serial numbers, click Select serials by those items, turn on the box by the serial number, and click Ok!
  6. For products, click the Action dropdown and select what to do with them.
  7. Only click Partial Refund if you are refunding something other than the items on the invoice, and even if you are not refunding the deposit. If you want to give a partial refund on a specific item on the invoice, then leave the quantity blank on that item, otherwise it will refund both the full price of the item and the Price you enter here.
  8. The Payment method dropdown will default to the original method used by the customer. See notes on some of the various methods below and change it if needed, or if you want to use a different method for your own reasons.

     
    • ACH: We do not support refunds via ACH. You can leave this as the refund payment method, but will then need to login to the ACH platform and make the actual refund there.
    • Credit Card: We only support refunding to Worldpay or Authorize.net at this time. For Stripe, you can leave this as the refund payment method, but will then need to issue the refund in Stripe's dashboard.
    • PayPal, Square: This will indicate you refunded the customer via that method, but you will need to issue the refund via PayPal or Square manually.
    • Store Credit: This will add the refund amount in the form of store credit to the customer's account for their future use.
  9. In the Check Number/Reference Number, you can put the refund reason. If you are refunding by check, this field gets populated with the customer's check number they paid with. Unless you are giving them back their original check, change it to your refund check number you are giving to them.
  10. Click Begin Refund.
  11. Note that it will add a line item "(none) - Granular amount" to account for the deposit paid. This is normal.

     
  12. Click Finalize Refund.
  13. Review the refund details, then click Continue.
  14. You will be taken to the refund invoice, as shown below.

     
    • There is a link to the invoice you refunded (1039 in the example above), and a Returns link that takes you to the Returns and RMA screen to process any Pending and/or RMA Requests you made.
    • You will see the items you refunded which are the same as on the original invoice, but with negative quantities and amounts.
    • The Total will reflect the refund (whether partial or full), minus the deposit. In other words, the amount you refunded.

If you want to refund the deposit as well, continue with these steps.

  1. To the right of Linked Ticket, click the ticket number link (4212 as shown above).
  2. On the Ticket, there will now be three linked Invoices.

     
    If you do not see that green Invoiced box near the top, you will find them under the Ticket Info section.

     
    In either place, click the lowest numbered invoice (1038 in the above examples), which will take you to the deposit invoice.
  3. Now simply process it like a normal refund.
2

2 posts were split to a new topic: ACH refunds