Sometimes you have to give money back: you double-charged, the customer paid twice, or the work was not right. ClippingCash refunds card payments straight back to the card they came from.
1 Check you are allowed
Refunds are restricted to owner and admin roles. A crew member or a limited office user will not see the refund option at all.
That is deliberate: a refund moves money out of your connected Stripe account, and that is not a button every login should have. If you cannot see it, you need someone with an owner or admin role to do it.
2 Find the payment
Go to Payments and find the payment you want to reverse. Refunds work off the original payment record, not off the invoice, because the refund has to go back through the same card transaction.
A payment taken outside of Stripe, such as cash or a cheque you recorded manually, cannot be refunded here. Try and you get This payment has no Stripe reference to refund. Give cash back as cash and record it separately.
3 Choose full or partial
Opening the refund dialog gives you an amount field. The placeholder tells you the default, as Full refund with the payment’s total in brackets.
- Leave the amount blank for a full refund.
- Type an amount for a partial refund.
If you enter something invalid you get Enter a positive amount, or leave blank for a full refund.
Partial refunds are the right tool more often than people expect. If you missed the back lawn, refunding a fair portion is better for the relationship than refunding everything or arguing about all of it.
4 Pick a reason
There are three reason codes, and they map to what Stripe expects:
- Requested by customer, the everyday case. Use this for goodwill refunds and service complaints.
- Duplicate, when the customer genuinely paid twice for the same thing.
- Fraudulent, when the payment was not legitimately authorised.
Only use Fraudulent for actual fraud. It is a signal to Stripe’s risk systems, not a general “something went wrong” option, and misusing it on your own customers can affect how your account is assessed.
Click Issue refund.
5 What happens next
The refund appears as its own refund row in the Transactions ledger rather than deleting or altering the original payment. Both the original payment and the reversal stay visible, which is what you want for your records and for anyone reconciling the account later.
The customer’s card issuer decides how quickly it appears on their statement, and that is typically several business days and outside your control. Tell the customer that up front, because otherwise you will get a second call in two days.
Refund or credit
A refund is not always the right instrument. If the customer is staying with you, issuing a credit on their account puts the money against their next invoice with no card fees involved and no waiting for a card issuer.
Refund when the relationship is ending or when the customer specifically wants their money back. Credit when they are carrying on and just need the balance fixed. You can see the effect either way in their ledger, where a credit balance shows as CR.