Refunds
When you refund a payment, you are essentially returning the funds received from a customer. Refunds may be partial (only a portion of the amount is refunded) or full (the entire amount is refunded).
There are several reasons for refunding a subscription, such as an incorrect charge, cancellation, or unsatisfactory service.
In Chargebee, you can either issue a refund or record offline refunds. For both operations, Credit Notes are generated for the refunds made.
Issuing a Refund
You can issue a refund for paid or partially paid invoices through the web interface or using the API. To issue a refund through the web interface, open the invoice you want to refund and click the Refund option on the invoice.
A prompt asking you to confirm the refund appears, displaying details of the Credit Notes that will be created for the refund. Click Confirm.
A Refundable Credit Note with details of the refund will be available on the Credit Notes page.
Note
- This option cannot be used to refund invoices that have been paid offline. You need to manually record such refunds in Chargebee.
- Once you make the refund the amount will be credited to the account that was used for the payment.
- If the refund is being made for a transaction that is not settled, then the transaction will simply be voided. Partial refunds are also not supported for transactions that are yet to be settled.
- Refunds are taken into account as separate transactions, and transaction charges may be applied. However, when a transaction is voided, it is not considered as a separate transaction.
- Refunds can only be made within a specific period of time from the date of the transaction. The period allowed for refund depends on the gateway that was used for the transaction.
- The refund period varies with the payment gateway used to initiate a refund.
- Refunds initiated outside of Chargebee—for example, directly from your payment gateway's dashboard—are not automatically recorded in Chargebee.
- Chargebee does not automatically detect or sync such externally initiated refunds.
- Only refunds initiated from the Chargebee dashboard are recorded in Chargebee.
Reconciling Offline Refunds
To reconcile the refunds that you have made offline, record them in Chargebee using the Record Refund option.
You can use this option to record refunds made via payment methods other than card and online wallets, such as cash, check, or bank transfer. Click Record Refund to provide details of the refund, such as the amount, refund method, refund date, and reference number. You can also provide comments and notes, if any.
You can also record offline refunds using the 'record a refund' API.
Partial and Full Refunds
You can only refund up to the amount charged on the invoice. You can make one or more partial refunds or a full refund against an invoice until you reach the total amount charged. Chargebee will not let you refund more than what is on the invoice.
Note
Making partial refunds against an invoice in Chargebee is also subject to the associated payment gateway(s) supporting partial refunds.
When refunding an invoice that also includes Promotional Credits, the amount to be returned to the card, and the amount added back to your customer's Promotional Credits balance will be calculated proportionately. Here is an example to illustrate:
Example
Total Invoice Amount: $30 Promotional Credits Adjusted: $10 Card Payment: $20
If you enter $10 as the amount to be refunded, Chargebee (calculating in proportions) will assume you want to return 50% of the card payment ($20) to your customer.
Chargebee will use 50% as a marker to refund the Promotional Credits in the invoice as well.
Your refund of $10 will look like this: $10 returned to the card used to make the payment and $5 added back to the customer's Promotional Credits balance.
Adding Credits Instead of a Refund
If you want to provide credits to your customer instead of a refund, you can create Credit Notes. This is useful in situations where you do not need to refund money to a customer, but you can provide credits that can be applied to the next invoice.
See also
Bulk Refund for Multiple Invoices
Chargebee does not have a direct option to perform bulk refunds for multiple invoices from the Invoices user interface. However, you can achieve this through the following methods:
- Bulk Operations: Use the Bulk Operations feature to record refunds for multiple invoices at once. This involves importing a CSV file with the invoice details and refund amounts. Navigate to Settings > Import & Export Data > Choose a Bulk Operation > Invoices > Refund Invoices. Download the sample CSV, fill it with the required invoice and refund details, and import the file to process the refunds.
- API Integration: Integrate with the Chargebee API to programmatically issue refunds for multiple invoices. The Refund an Invoice API endpoint allows you to refund an invoice. You can build a script or application to fetch the required invoices and call this API for each invoice to process the refunds.
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