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How do I refund a payment?

If for some reason your Client is no longer using your product or services, or they’re not satisfied, you may need to issue a refund. A refund can be processed directly from your FreshBooks account for all WePay and Stripe payments, and all other manual refunds can be updated by you as well.

 

Refund an Online Payment

 
PayPal refunds will need to be done manually instead. For Barclaycard, WePay and Stripe payments, only credit card payments up to 60 days old and Bank Transfers (ACH) up to 90 days old can be refunded within your FreshBooks account. If the payment is older, contact Barclaycard, WePay or Stripe directly instead.
 
Refunds can only be processed by the owner of the account. To refund a payment that was made through Barclaycard Payments, WePay or Stripe, use the below steps:
  1. Choose whether you'd like to refund on an individual Invoice or from the Payments section:
    1. Select the Payments section
      1. Then either in the Invoice Payments tab, or the Checkout Link Payments tab, hover over a payment you want to refund
      2. Select the refund button - if it does not appear, the payment is too old to refund
        Refund button above a payment.
    2. Or select the Invoices section
      1. Then select the Invoice you want to refund
      2. Scroll down to the All Payments for Invoice [Number] and check the box(es) off next to the payment
      3. Select Bulk Actions and select Refund
        Refund option selected from More Actions dropdown.
  2. On the Refund page, under Refund Options, choose between Full Refund or Other Amount
    Refund page with options to choose on how much to refund.
  3. Under Reason for Refund, choose between Duplicate, Fraudulent or Requested by Customer
  4. Select the Refund button to confirm. A refund notification will be emailed to the Client once the refund is processed, and the payment will be updated to reflect the refunded amount with a reversal reason.

Notes:
  • Partial refunds through WePay are limited to a maximum of $50,000
  • Refunds take 3-7 business days to process and are taken from your Barclaycard/WePay/Stripe account balance first if any funds are available, or your connected bank account if there is no balance
  • Transaction fees are not refunded for Barclaycard, Stripe and PayPal payments
  • Transaction fees are only refunded in full for WePay and not for partial refunds
  • The Invoice status will stay the same until the refund has finished processing, once processed, the Invoice will return to its previous status (Overdue, Partially Paid, or Sent). If the Invoice will not be fully paid, use the latter steps for Manual Payments to add a negative line item and reduce the balance to $0
  • Checkout Links that have been refunded will indicate a status of Refunded
 

Refund a Manual Payment

If your refund was not processed through Barclaycard, WePay or Stripe, or you're looking to update after manually refunding PayPal payments, you can manually adjust the original payment amount with the below steps:
  1. Process the refund outside of FreshBooks as needed (like your PayPal account)
  2. Go to the Payments section
  3. Find the payment you want to refund and select it
  4. Edit the total in the Amount field to reflect the new amount after the refund ($0 or a specific amount after a partial refund)
  5. In the Notes field, specify any details about the refund
    Payment being edited with fields changed.
  6. Select the checkmark button to save your changes
  7. Then in the saved payment, select the Invoice Number link to go to that Invoice
    Invoice link inside a payment.
  8. Select the Edit button on the Invoice
  9. Add a line item called Refund (or something similar) with the partial or full amount you refunded as a negative value
    Invoice with new line item called refund with a rate of -100.
  10. Select Save to finish. The Invoice will now reflect the refunded amount.
 

FAQs

How do I reconcile refunds in my bank reconciliation?
If you're using Bank Reconciliation and you need to reconcile full or partial invoice payment refunds, use the steps in How do I reconcile complex transactions in bank reconciliation?.
 
Where do I view all my Refunds?
All past refunds can be viewed with these steps:
  1. Go directly to Online Payments here, or select the Settings section
  2. Under Connections and Integrations, select Online Payments
  3. Select the All Transactions sub-tab
  4. On the list of all transactions, select the Status header to sort by status, all refunded transactions will be grouped together for you to view.
    All transactions page with a payment shown with a status of refunded.
Select users can view refunds in their WePay report as well.

What happens if I refund the payment from within my WePay or Stripe dashboard instead?
If you process your refund outside of FreshBooks from within your Stripe or WePay dashboard, the payment in your FreshBooks account will also be automatically updated to reflect the refund for you.

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