When you give money back to a supporter, record a refund so their giving history, your fund balances and your giving totals reflect what you actually kept. A refund is recorded as a new outbound payment that reverses the original; the original payment is left unchanged, so the history shows both.

Before you start

  • You need relationships:write:fundraisingactivities.
  • Refunds are offered only on inbound payments, money you received. An outbound payment, including a refund, has no Refund button.
  • A refund always reverses the full amount of the payment. The form has no option for a partial refund.
  • If a payment hasn’t been claimed for Gift Aid yet, check its eligibility before your next claim; see Understanding Gift Aid.

Record a refund

  1. Open the contact’s profile and select the payment in the Activity feed (use the Gifts filter to find it).
  2. In Edit payment, choose Refund.
  3. Read the confirmation: “This records a new outbound payment of [amount] that reverses this payment. The original payment is left unchanged.”
  4. Choose Record refund, or Cancel to go back.

You’ll see “Refund of [amount] recorded.” The refund is dated today and copies the original payment’s details: amount, currency, payer, method, bank account, fund allocations, allocation type, attribution and references. Any external keys from an import are not copied.

What a refund changes

  • The refund appears in the contact’s activity as a separate outbound payment.
  • Giving totals count what you received after refunds, so the contact’s Lifetime giving and the giving dashboard fall by the refunded amount once the refund has been processed.

Refunds you don’t record yourself

When a payment collected through a connected provider is reversed, for example a Direct Debit chargeback, ThirdSectorBee records the reversal automatically and raises a Payment reversed exception for your team to review. Don’t record a second refund for it. See Resolve reconciliation exceptions.

If something goes wrong

If the refund can’t be recorded, the confirmation shows the error and nothing is saved. Try again, and check you still have permission to record payments.