📝 Overview
Sometimes you need to return money to a customer, whether that's a full refund, part of a payment, or credit towards a future purchase. Refunds are issued from the customer's Payments tab on your Business Dashboard.
This guide walks you through issuing a refund, refunding part of a payment, choosing a refund type, and the reasons a refund may sometimes be unavailable.
💸 How to Issue a Refund
You issue a refund from the customer's profile. Go to Customers ➜ Customer List, find and click the customer, then open their Payments tab.
Here you'll see a list of all their past transactions, with a refund button next to each confirmed payment. Locate the transaction you want to refund, and click Refund.
↩️ Choosing a Refund Type
On the next page, you can choose how the refund is returned to the customer. There are two options.
Click the arrow to learn more about the available refund types
Click the arrow to learn more about the available refund types
🔄 The original payment processor, or offline/cash when not supported
This refunds the payment to the original payment processor the customer used. If they paid using cash, you'll need to refund the payment to the customer manually.
💰 Apply as account credit towards a future purchase
Instead of refunding to the payment processor, you can add the refund as account credit on the customer's profile. You can apply this credit manually when the customer makes their next purchase, or have it applied automatically against their next membership billing if they're on a recurring plan.
⚠️ Credit refunds remain on the customer's profile and are not returned to the customer's payment processor.
💡 If the payment you're refunding was a membership payment that also included a Joining Fee, you can select which payments to refund by ticking them.
⚠️ Cash refunds need to be confirmed manually once received, so they're reflected in your revenue reports.
After creating a cash refund, go to To-Dos ➜ Offline Refunds to confirm it.
✂️ Refunding Part of a Payment
You don't have to refund the whole amount. When issuing a refund, you can edit the amount to refund only part of a payment, for example refunding half of a class pack a customer no longer needs.
Click Refund next to the payment, change the amount to the partial value you want to refund, then choose your refund type and process it as usual. The refund amount is inclusive of any tax or fees.
You can then go into that payments invoice, and check the payment amount and you will see that it has been updated to also include that refund.
If you are refunding an Offline/Cash payment, once you process the refund, you can go into To-Do's - Offline Refunds to Confirm the refund once the customer receives the funds, or Void it if the refund has been cancelled.
⚠️ Not every payment processor supports partial refunds. Where a processor only supports refunding a payment in full, you can still issue the partial amount as a cash/offline refund or as account credit instead.
💵 Reasons a Refund May Be Unavailable
Sometimes you may try to refund a payment but don't see the option, or the refund fails to go through. This doesn't mean something has gone wrong. There are a few common reasons a refund might be unavailable.
Click the arrow to learn more about why refunds may be unavailable
Click the arrow to learn more about why refunds may be unavailable
⌛ The payment is still pending
If a payment is still being processed by the payment processor (such as Stripe or GoCardless), you won't yet see the option to refund it. Once the payment has cleared and its status updates to Completed, the refund button will appear. If the payment stays pending longer than expected, you may need to contact the payment provider or our support team for help.
🏛️ GoCardless Safe Refunds
If your customer paid via GoCardless, the Safe Refunds feature may sometimes block or delay refunds. GoCardless recommends payments aren't refunded within 7 days of being charged, which gives added protection against refunding unsettled payments. This means a payment can't be refunded until 7 days after it was charged, allowing time for it to settle into your account first.
This is designed to prevent fraud and comply with mandate rules, so you might not be able to issue a refund immediately. You can read more about how Safe Refunds work, and the steps to take, here.
💡 You can get in touch with GoCardless support and ask them to turn off Safe Refunds for you, which will allow you to refund payments immediately.
✋ Refund limit reached
To protect your account from misuse, a daily limit applies to the number of refunds that can be issued through your account. If you've reached this limit, you won't be able to issue further refunds until the next day, or until the limit is increased.
If you'd like to increase this limit, contact our support team and we'll review your account and lift the limit where appropriate. When you reach out, please provide:
The customer name
The payment amount
The date of payment
Any error messages you're seeing
❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Find answers to common questions or additional details that may not be covered in the main instructions.
Click the arrow to view frequently asked questions
Click the arrow to view frequently asked questions
Can I refund only part of a payment?
Click the arrow to see the answer
Click the arrow to see the answer
Yes. When you click Refund on a payment, you can edit the amount to refund only part of it, rather than the full transaction. Change the amount to the partial value you want to refund, then choose your refund type and process it. The refund amount is inclusive of any tax or fees.
⚠️ Not every payment processor supports partial refunds. Where a processor only supports a full refund, you can issue the partial amount as a cash/offline refund or as account credit instead. If a payment included separate components, such as a membership payment and a joining fee, you can also choose which components to refund by ticking them.
Can I refund a payment made with Apple Pay or Google Pay?
Click the arrow to see the answer
Click the arrow to see the answer
Yes. Payments made with Apple Pay or Google Pay are processed through Stripe, so refunds work exactly like regular Stripe card payments.
A customer has been charged multiple times or has duplicate charges. How do I resolve this?
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Click the arrow to see the answer
If a customer has been charged more than once for the same purchase, start by opening their profile and checking their Payments tab. This shows all recorded payments, including dates and amounts, so you can look for duplicate entries matching the same date and amount.
If you find duplicates, you can refund the extra charges using the refund process in this guide. Click Refund next to each duplicate payment and choose whether to refund to the original payment processor or apply as account credit.
If the duplicate charges show in your payment processor's dashboard (Stripe or GoCardless) but only one payment appears on the customer's profile, this may be a sync issue. In that case, contact our support team through the chat widget on your dashboard with the customer's name, the duplicate charge amounts and dates, and the charge IDs from your payment processor if available. The team can investigate and reconcile the payments.
How long does a refund take to reach the customer?
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Click the arrow to see the answer
For Stripe refunds, the refund is typically processed within a few business days, though it may take longer to appear on the customer's bank statement depending on their bank. For GoCardless refunds, the process may take longer due to the nature of Direct Debit processing. If GoCardless Safe Refunds is enabled, there's an additional waiting period before the refund can be initiated.
A customer was charged after their membership was cancelled. Can I refund this?
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Click the arrow to see the answer
Yes. If a customer was charged for a billing period after their membership should have ended, you can issue a refund from their Payments tab using the steps in this guide. This can happen when a membership is cancelled close to a billing date and the payment was already scheduled or initiated before the cancellation took effect.
For more detail on why this may occur, see the guide on what happens when a payment fails here.
How do I reverse an account credit refund?
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Click the arrow to see the answer
If a customer was refunded as account credit (for example, unintentionally) and you'd like to give them a monetary refund instead, you can undo the credit using the account credit refund reversal tool. Once the credit refund is reversed, you can then issue a monetary refund if needed. If the customer has already used part of their credit, you can still reverse the refund, but only the credit amount they have left can be reversed.
⚠️ This tool only works for account credit refunds. It can't be used to reverse card, direct debit, or offline (cash) refunds.
A refund appeared that we didn't issue. What should I do?
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Click the arrow to see the answer
First, check with anyone else on your team who can issue refunds, in case it was processed by another Owner, Admin or Staff Member. If no one on your team issued it, contact our support team through the chat widget on your dashboard. Include the customer's name, the refund amount and date, and the refund or charge ID from your payment processor if available, so the team can investigate.