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 FreshBooks Payments (WePay) and Stripe payments, and all other manual refunds can be updated by you as well.
Refund an Online Payment
Refunds can only be processed by the Owner of the account. To refund a payment that was made through Barclaycard Payments, FreshBooks Payments (WePay) or Stripe, use the below steps:
- Choose whether you'd like to refund on an individual Invoice or from the Payments section:
- Click on the Payments section
- Then either in the Invoice Payments tab, or the Checkout Link Payments tab, hover over a payment you want to refund
- Click on the refund button - if it does not appear, the payment is too old to refund
- Or click on the Invoices section
- Then click on the Invoice you want to refund
- Scroll down to the All Payments for Invoice [Number] and check the box(es) off next to the payment
- Click on Bulk Actions and select Refund
- Click on the Payments section
- On the Refund page, under Refund Options, choose between Full Refund or Other Amount
- Under Reason for Refund, choose between Duplicate, Fraudulent or Requested by Customer
- Click on 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 FreshBooks Payments (WePay) and not for partial refunds
- The Invoice status will stay the same until the refund has finished processed, 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, FreshBooks Payments (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:
- Process the refund outside of FreshBooks as needed (like your PayPal account)
- Go to the Payments section
- Find the payment you want to refund and click on it
- Edit the total in the Amount field to reflect the new amount after the refund ($0 or a specific amount after a partial refund)
- In the Notes field, specify any details about the refund
- Click on the checkmark button to save your changes
- Then in the saved payment, click on the Invoice Number link to go to that Invoice
- Click on the Edit button on the Invoice
- Add a line item called Refund (or something similar) with the partial or full amount you refunded as a negative value
- Click Save to finish. The Invoice will now reflect the refunded amount.
FAQs
Where do I view all my Refunds?
All past refunds can be viewed with these steps:
- Click on the gear icon in the top left corner
- Then click on Accept / Manage Online Payments
- Click on the All Transactions sub-tab
- On the list of all transactions, click on the Status header to sort by status, all refunded transactions will be grouped together for you to view.
Select users can see Refunds in their FreshBooks Payments 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.