Refunds

This article is for Statement-based sites. For more information on Relationship Invoicing refunds and its processes, go to this article. For general information on Relationship Invoicing, go here.

The following section deals with processing refunds on an existing subscriptions. Advanced Billing has dedicated another entire section that deals with inspecting the refunds, from a purely transaction standpoint.

For more information refund-based transaction, please view our transaction documentation.

Payment Gateways Supporting Refunds

Refunds are supported for the following gateways:

Adyen
Authorize.Net
Braintree Blue
Chase Orbital
Checkout
CyberSource
Elavon
eWay Rapid
Litle (Vantiv)
Moneris
NMI
Payeezy (First Data)
Windcave (formerly Payment Express)
Pin Payments
Square (legacy only)
Stripe
TrustCommerce
BlueSnap
UNIPaaS

Most of the above gateways only support refunding a transaction if it occurred in the last 120 days. If you don't see the transaction you want to refund on the list, you will need to refund it directly at the gateway.

Credit vs. Refund

With Advanced Billing you have the ability to apply a refund to payments that have been processed at the gateway. It is important to note the distinction between a credit and a refund.

A refund will return an amount, up to the full amount of the original payment, back to the customer’s credit card. A refund does not affect the customer’s account balance, but will change the total revenue collected for the subscription.
A credit, will simply update the customer’s Advanced Billing balance without actually returning the funds. A credit will appear as a negative balance.

Issuing Refunds

Issuing a refund for Invoices

Refunds in Invoice Architecture can be done by navigating to the invoice that needs to be refunded.
Once in the desired invoice select "More Options" and click on "Refund Invoice..."
Pop-up prompts will help walk you through the rest of the refund process.
Options to choose if the refund is applied back to the payment profile via a gateway or externally via cash or check will be given.
Additionally, you will be able to choose if the invoice balance is forgiven or still expecting payment.

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Click the Invoice option to locate the invoice to be refunded.

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Open the desired invoice.

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Select Refund Invoice.

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Select the payment to refund.

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Select if the refund will go back to the payment profile or will be made externally.

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Select if the invoice balance will be forgiven (Refund and credit the invoice) or owed (Refund but do not credit the invoice).

Issuing a refund for statements

Select Process Refund to begin the process.

To issue a refund, simply navigate to the subscription detail page by clicking on the Start Date or on the “View” link in the subscriptions listing.
There, you will see a link to Process Refund.
From there you will see a list of payments that are eligible for a refund.
Select the payment you’d like to add a refund to by clicking the Select link next to it.

Select the payment to refund.

Enter the full or partial refund amount and a memo.

Advanced Billing will communicate with your payment gateway and, depending on the state of the transaction and the amount of the refund, either void the original transaction or apply a credit to the credit card. A partial refund can only be applied to a payment once it has been settled at the gateway. Transactions generally settle within 24 hours.

Refund Timeline

Refunds typically take several business days to appear on your subscriber’s card. For the most part refunds appear within 2-12 business days. Please consult your gateway for expectations on refunds and established timelines.

Refund to Original Credit Card

When you refund a credit card in Advanced Billing, for a previous transaction, the refund is placed on the original card used to complete the transaction.

The following list of bullet points will illustrate the flow of refunds through Advanced Billing, in the event a subscription has had more than one card on file.

The refund transaction is tied to the original transaction ID in your gateway that was generated when the original charge was placed.
When the refund is initiated from Advanced Billing, the gateway looks up the original transaction, via ID, and issues the refund to the original card.
In the Advanced Billing application, when you view the refund transaction, you will only see the current credit card information displayed on screen.
The refund in all cases will be refunded to the original card.

If you have further concerns about which card was refunded, we encourage you to check the refund transaction in your gateway to visually verify that the refund has been initiated back to the correct card.

External Refund

If you find that Advanced Billing does not support refunds via your gateway directly, we have a solution. You can issue an external refund in Advanced Billing.

First, you’ll need to refund your customer in your gateway’s portal. Then return to Advanced Billing and select “Record External Payment” for your subscriber. When you issue an external refund, no communication is made to the gateway via Advanced Billing. This is simply a way to record evidence of the transaction in the gateway.