Refunds for online payments can be issued directly within the admin dashboard, and the total owed/paid for a reservation can be edited to reflect changing balances for all kinds of payments. Watch the video below for a tutorial of how to issue refunds within Park.
View payment history
Each reservation has a payment history that keeps track of all associated payments and refunds. To access this history, click on a reservation in your calendar to open the reservation slideover, and scroll down to find the History section.
Issue a refund for an online payment
Each online payment in the history includes a link to the corresponding transaction from your Stripe dashboard. Refunds can be issues from within Stripe, or directly within Park by clicking the “Refund” button on the right.
The refund window includes a breakdown of the transaction, showing the total paid by your guest, the application and processing fees, and the net realized by your park.
Several options for the refund amount are included at the top of the window.
- Refund Net: refunds everything paid to you, excluding all fees.
- Full Refund: refunds the payment total. If you select this option, your updated net will be negative, and you will lose some money to cover the paid fees.
- Custom: set a custom amount. You should pick this option if you want to issue a partial refund, or withhold a cancellation fee.
In all cases, you can check the box to “Refund the service fee.” When this box is checked, a proportional amount of the application fee will be refunded from Park. If the Refund Net option is selected when this box is checked, the refund amount will be automatically updated to provide the largest possible refund you can issue without losing any money to fees. The Stipe processing fees are the only part of the transaction that are non-refundable.
If you would like, you may enter a refund reason in the box at the bottom. This is not shown to your guests, but it is shown in the payment history if you would like to track it internally.
Refund communications
If refund emails are enabled in your Stripe account settings, guests will receive a message automatically notifying them about the refund. Otherwise, refund notifications are not sent automatically.
If you would like to send your guest a more detailed refund notification, you may do so using the “Send message” button on the reservation slideover.
Refund timing and tracking
Refunds can take up to 5 - 10 days to settle in a customer’s account after they are issued. If a guest is not seeing the refund in their account after this time frame, you can share the refund Acquirer Reference Number (ARN), System Trace Audit Number (STAN), or Retrieval Reference Number (RRN) to help them track the refund at their bank. This number can be found in your Stripe dashboard, by using the link from the reservation payment history.
For more information, please see Stripe’s support page on tracking refunds.
Cancelling a reservation
If you are issuing a refund because a guest has cancelled their reservation, you can click “remove” on the reservation slideover to remove it from your calendar. Deleted reservations can still be referenced by searching for the guest name, email, or phone number at the top of the page.
Tracking partial or offline refunds
If a guest was issued a refund outside of our system - like with cash or check - or if a guest was issued only a partial refund, the total owed and paid of the reservation can be updated to track the adjusted amounts. If you enter a reduced total paid and save the reservation, the difference will be tracked as a negative payment in the reservation history. This will improve the accuracy of the information in your reports section.
If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to us at support@poweredbypark.com!