✨ Please note: Payments are available on the Lite plan or above.
This article covers:
💡 Please note: Refunds are not automatically processed on Bookwhen. If you need to issue a refund, you must process it manually through your payment gateway or another offline method.
How to identify a refund requirement
When a customer cancels their booking, Bookwhen will mark "Refund" next to the booking reference in the Bookings tab list, highlighting that a refund is required. For example:
How to create a refund
To create a refund:
Select the Bookings tab from the left-hand menu on your account.
Locate the booking on your list by either scrolling through, or using the search filters at the top of the list. Once you've added any relevant filters, select Search to generate the search.
Select the booking reference hyperlink for the booking you'd like to action a refund for:
To issue a refund, you must ensure the booking has been cancelled. If it hasn't, select Cancel this booking or locate the ticket and cancel it.
Refunding an online payment
If the customer paid by card, select the View payment link:
The View payment link takes you through to the payment on the website of your chosen payment provider (you may need to log into your payment provider account).
You can then process the refund:
Once you have refunded the payment on your gateway, you can then return to the booking on Bookwhen to record the refund.
Refunding an offline payment
Since offline payments are processed outside of Bookwhen, you'll need to arrange any refunds directly with the customer using the payment method they used. Once the refund is complete, you can record it on Bookwhen.
Instead of refunding, you also have the option to:
Transfer their ticket or
Provide credit in the form of a unique discount code instead of refunding (available on the Lite plan and above).
Recording a refund within Bookwhen
Issuing a refund through your payment provider doesn't translate to the booking on Bookwhen. If you'd like to record a refund on Bookwhen, cancel the ticket or booking (depending on what needs to be cancelled).
Cancel ticket: Under the attendee information, this option only cancels that ticket. Choose this option if there are multiple tickets on the booking, and you only cancel a specific one.
Cancel this booking: Under Options, this option cancels the entire booking, including all tickets within the booking.
Once cancelled, you will have the option to Record refund:
Once selected, you will then be able to record the Refund amount, when it was Received on, the Payment type, and a space for any Notes you may wish to add that may come in handy for future reference:
👉 The Refund amount section is handy if you would only like to refund partially.
Recording refunds: How it works in Bookwhen
The Record refund button appears when the total payments on a booking exceed the total costs. This applies to both online and offline payments. A refund status can also occur when:
A ticket or booking is cancelled.
A discount is recalculated (e.g., after an admin transfer).
Bookwhen does not receive refund information from online payment providers. If you issue a refund directly through your payment provider, it won't automatically reflect in Bookwhen. The View payment link simply redirects you to the transaction in your payment provider, where you can issue the refund. If Bookwhen's Record refund button is available, you can also manually log the refund.
Refunding via Worldpay
How you issue refunds depends on when the payment was taken and when you migrated to the new provider. Refunds must be issued via your Enterprise Business Centre dashboard if you've migrated and started taking payments through the new Worldpay payment provider (CyberSource).
Refunding via Worldpay post-migration (CyberSource)
Any payments taken before your migration date were collected through the old Worldpay payment provider (WPOP). Refunds for these payments had to be issued through WPOP, but access to this system was revoked after 28th November 2022 when WPOP was closed.
Refunding via Worldpay pre-migration (WPOP)
If you needed to refund a payment taken before migration, you would have had to do so through your old WPOP account before access was removed.
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