From time to time, you may find yourself needing to provide one or more of your clients refunds on paid invoices. Whatever the reason for the reimbursement, and whatever your business' refund policy may be, BusyPaws makes it easy to process and track any and all refunds made on your invoices. In this guide we will take a look at everything you need to know about refunds.
Important Notes on Refunds
Invoice payments may be refunded at any time. Before processing any refunds however, there are a few very important things to note:
Refunding an invoice has no affect on any of its associated credits. If your business' policy dictates that refunding a service means the client should no longer have access to those credits, you will need to remove them from their profile manually. Alternatively, if the invoice is associated with a booking, users will have the option of destroying associated credits if/when that booking is cancelled.
Refunding an invoice with one or more products does not return those products to your inventory. If the returned product is in sellable condition and you wish to return it to your stock, that will need to be done manually.
Payment processing fees are not returned to your business when a refund is processed. Though there is no additional processing fee for refunds, the processing fee for the original transaction must be paid, even if the funds are returned to the client in full.
i.e. If the original charge was for $100, your business will have received $96.80. You may choose to reimburse the client up to $100, however the original fees ($3.20) will not be returned to your business.
Processing a refund on a Stripe payment automatically returns funds to the customer, processing refunds on manual payments does not. When invoice payments are reconciled manually for cash, credit, debit, or any other forms of payment (i.e. not through Stripe), users will need to return funds manually when processing refunds.
If you are using a Stripe PoS card reader linked to your BusyPaws account to process payments in-person, you can use the refund process discussed in this guide to return funds to a credit card that was used to pay an invoice in-person. For more information on the in-person refund process for Interac payments (Canada only), see our guide on Processing In-Person Payments.
Stating Your Refund Policy
Every business has a different policy for dealing with refunds. As such, it is important that you communicate your business' policy to your clients. You may choose to do this by including information about refunds in your forms and/or contracts. You can also add a statement describing your refund policy to the bottom of your payment receipts. To do this, start by clicking the gear icon at the bottom-left corner of the page.
Then select "Invoices" in the "Product Configuration" section.
Enter a description into the "Refund Policy" field in the Receipt Defaults section of your Invoice & Payment Settings page.
When you are done, be sure to click the "Update Receipts" button at the bottom of the section to save your changes.
Once you have added a refund policy to your account, it will be listed at the bottom of all payment receipts. Change or add to this message at any time by making updates from your General Settings page.
The Refund Process
Any payment that has been processed on an invoice may be refunded. When Stripe payments are refunded the clients' funds are returned to their account automatically. If a manually reconciled payment is refunded, the funds will need to be returned to the client manually as well (i.e. cash refund, e-transfer, etc.). Regardless of the type of refund however, the steps for processing it in BusyPaws are the same.
Start by first locating the invoice on which you need to provide a refund. You can locate a specific invoice by using the search bar at the top of the page, or by checking the associated client profile or booking page.
Any invoice with at least one payment towards its total will have a "Refund" button located to the left of the "Actions" button at the top of its information page. Click this button to begin processing a refund.
The Refund pop-up allows you to choose the value of the refund you want to provide. For invoices paid via Stripe, the pop-up will include a message indicating that processing a refund will return funds automatically to the card originally used to make the payment(s).
When an invoice has one or more non-Stripe payments on it, a different message will display in yellow. This message indicates that the presence of manually processed (non-Stripe) payments means that the funds will need to be returned to the client manually as well (i.e. as a cash refund, money transfer, etc.)
Note that, even if there is a partial Stripe payment on an invoice, if any part of the invoice was reconciled using a different payment method the funds will not be automatically returned to the client's account.
Use the "Amount to Refund" field to set the value you want to reimburse. This value can be anywhere from 0.01 to the charge total, and will default to the maximum amount when the Refund pop-up is first opened. Enter a value into the field or use the up/down arrows to adjust by increments of 0.01. If a partial refund was previously processed on the transaction, its value will be listed next to "Total Refunded".
When you have set the refund amount, click the "Send Refund" button to process the reimbursement.
As mentioned previously, if the invoice was paid via Stripe, the funds will be automatically returned to the client's card. If the invoice had one or more non-Stripe payments, the refund will be reconciled on the invoice, but the actual reimbursement will need to be completed manually.
For more information about processing invoice payments, check out our guides on Stripe Payments and Manual Payment Processing.
Tracking Refunded Invoices
Once you've processed a refund on an invoice, how do you keep track of it? There are a few different ways that refunded invoices are indicated in BusyPaws. To begin with, any invoice with at least one refund processed on it (whether partial or full) will be flagged with a red "Refunded" status tag. This tag will appear at the top-right corner of the invoice itself as well as anywhere that the invoice is listed with its status (in your Invoices Index, on the customer's profile page, on an associated booking's info page, etc.).
The amount refunded will always be listed in red beneath the invoice total, along with the date and time at which the refund was processed.
Additionally, any refunds that have been put through on an invoice will be listed in the history feed on that invoice's information page. The history will indicate "Refunded" in red and list the client name, the name of the user that processed the refund, and the date & time of the refund.
When taking a look at your invoices overall, you can use the "Refunded" list on the Invoices Index to see a full list of your refunded invoices. This list includes all invoices on which a partial or full refund has been processed.
If a refunded invoice is associated with a booking, the refunded status will also be reflected on that booking's information page. For individual service bookings, the refunded status is indicated by a red "Refunded" status bar at the top of the page.
When a client's group booking invoice is refunded, that status will be indicated by a red payment icon next to their registration. If you hover your mouse over that icon, a small info bubble labelled "Refunded" will appear.
If you would like to know more about invoicing and payments, check out one of our many help guides on this topic: