Best Practices For Issuing A Refund

Issuing a refund to a client only refunds their payment amount. It does not change the total of the client's invoice, so if you issue a refund from a payment that is fully applied to a client's invoice(s), that will create a balance due. You can prevent this by first editing the client's invoice to reflect the reason for the refund and then issuing the refund from the open payment that is created. Or if you issue the refund first, you can correct the balance due showing on the client's invoice by editing the client's invoice afterward.

There are a number of different ways to edit an invoice to reduce its total, and the method that will work best for your particular refund will depend on the reason for the refund. Listed below are some of the most common reasons for issuing a refund and instructions on how to edit invoices for them. 

Services Were Cancelled

If you're refunding the client for canceled services, go to the Scheduler and edit the events’ Statuses to “Cancelled”. After you save, a window will pop up asking how you would like to charge for the cancellation. Select “Do Not Charge”, “Percentage Of Cost”, or “Flat Rate,” depending on whether you’ll be charging the client a cancellation fee. With any of these options, you are canceling the event at less than the full price, which will reduce the total of the client's invoice.

Client Was Overcharged For Extra Fees

If you're refunding the client because they were charged too much for an extra pet, holiday, after-hours, or weekend fees, you can correct their invoice by editing the events on the Scheduler and manually changing the extra fees to the correct amounts.

Client Was Overcharged For Services

If you're refunding the client because they were charged too much for the services themselves, you can correct their invoice by opening it and manually editing the prices for those services by clicking the pencil icon next to each line item.

If the client was overcharged because the wrong service was selected, you can correct that by editing the events on the Scheduler and manually changing the service to the correct one by selecting it from the "Service" dropdown.

Service Was Not Satisfactory

If you are refunding a client to reimburse them for unsatisfactory service, there are a few different ways you could adjust their invoice:

Manually edit the prices of individual services - open the invoice and manually edit the prices for the affected services by clicking the pencil icon next to each line item.

Add a discount on the invoice - open the invoice and click the pencil icon next to the “Discount” line to add a discount in the amount you want to refund the client. (You have the option to add the discount as a percentage or a flat dollar amount.)

Add a negative custom line item to the invoice - open the invoice and click the “Add Custom Item” button to add a custom line item with a negative amount as its cost. (An advantage of this method over the other two is that you can enter a description of what the item is for to help you keep track of why you reduced the balance of the invoice.)

Client Paid Too Early Or With Wrong Payment Method

If you're refunding a client who paid too early or wants to use a different payment method, you don’t need to make any adjustments to the invoice because the client is eventually going to pay it; you can just go ahead and issue the refund.

Refund For Unused Portion Of A Package

If the client has a package that they only partially redeemed, and you want to refund them for the unused portion, you can follow the instructions in our Best Practices For Removing A Partially Redeemed Package From A Client's Account to close the partially redeemed package and correct their balance.