When you refund an order, MenuDock sends the money back to the customer through the same provider they paid with. This article explains the refund mechanism from the payments side: what makes an order refundable, how full and partial refunds work, and what happens when one fails. For the step-by-step from the order screen, including how refunds tie in with cancelling, see Cancel and refund an order.
What can be refunded
A refund needs a real online payment to reverse. An order is refundable when:
- it was paid by an online method (card via Stripe or Square, or PayPal), so there's a provider charge to send back, and
- it hasn't already been refunded in full.
Cash orders cannot be refunded through MenuDock, because there was no online payment to reverse. For those orders the Issue Refund control simply doesn't appear. The same is true for any order that has no provider charge reference recorded against it.
How a refund is sent
You issue refunds from the order detail page, in the Refund section. You enter an amount and an optional reason, then confirm. MenuDock then:
- Sends the refund to the original provider (Stripe, Square or PayPal) for the connected account that took the payment.
- Records the refund against the order so the total refunded is always tracked, and a refund can never be counted twice across retries.
- Emails the customer to confirm their refund.
The amount is in your store's currency, the same one the customer was charged in.
Full and partial refunds
You can refund the whole order or part of it, up to whatever is still refundable, which is the total minus anything already refunded.
- A partial refund returns some of the total and the order keeps running. It is marked Partially Refunded with the amount sent back.
- A full refund returns everything. A manual full refund also moves the order to Cancelled and marks it Refunded.
Refunding does not by itself cancel an order unless it's a full refund. Cancelling and refunding are separate actions that often go together; the order-side article covers how they interact, including the automatic refund-on-cancel setting.
If a refund fails
Refunds run through your provider, so now and then one fails, for example an expired card on the provider's side or a temporary outage. When that happens the order shows a Refund attempt failed banner with a Try again button. Press it once the underlying issue is sorted rather than starting a fresh refund, which keeps you from sending the money twice. MenuDock's refund records are built so a retry of the same refund won't double up.
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Need a hand?
If a refund shows as failed, use Try again first and check your provider dashboard for the underlying reason. If the customer says they haven't received a refund that MenuDock shows as done, the money is usually with their bank or card issuer by then. Still stuck? Email support@menudock.co.uk with your store name and the order number.