Refunds
Refund methods and the ceiling a refund can never exceed.
A refund is money going out — each one a record of its own, raised against an approved or completed return, or against an open order that was paid too much. Several partial refunds against one return are fine.
Who can do this: the counter roles create and process refunds; there is no separate approval step beyond the permission itself.
Methods#
- Cash return — physical money, bank transfer or deposit.
- Store credit — see Store credit refunds.
- Loyalty points — credited to the customer's account (a real customer is required).
- Adjustment — an administrative write-off that pays nothing out.
The ceiling: never more than was paid#
Across every live refund on a return — pending ones included, because that money is already promised — the total can never exceed what the return is worth. The refusal does the arithmetic for you: "refund amount X exceeds the Y still refundable on this return (A of B already allocated)." The rule holds under pressure: two clerks racing to refund the same return cannot both slip under the ceiling, and if the system cannot verify what was already refunded it refuses rather than guessing.
The lifecycle#
Pending → Processing → Completed, with Failed as the retryable detour and Cancelled as the exit from pending. Two details worth knowing:
- Failed is not the end — a failed payout retries back to pending. The genuine finals are Completed ("a refund that paid out cannot be un-paid") and Cancelled ("a cancelled one is re-raised as a new refund").
- A settled refund's amount is frozen — "raise a separate refund for the difference" is the rule, so every payout stays its own honest record.
Completing a refund updates the parent return's refunded position and, where loyalty is in play, claws back points the refunded purchase had earned.
Refunding an overpayment#
When an edit lowers an open order's total below what the customer already paid, the order shows Refund due and cannot be completed until the excess goes back. Refund excess on the order's record page raises a refund against the order itself — no return involved:
- It names the payment it comes off, which decides the method the excess is taken from in every tender figure.
- It can never exceed what the order owes back, nor what that payment carried.
- It is paid as a cash return or written off as an adjustment. Store credit is refused for money owed back: "an overpayment is refunded in cash or as an adjustment — a store credit for money owed back is not supported yet."
- It is issued completed and appears in the order's Payments section as a Refund row; the order can then complete.
Its order and its amount are fixed once raised — "an overpayment refund's amount is the excess it was raised for — cancel it and raise another." Full walkthrough: Recording payments & deposits.