Refund a paid invoice

Refunds in Dispatch Bros are issued on the payment, not the invoice: open Payments in the left sidebar, click the payment row, and use the Refund… action in the detail drawer. You can refund the full remaining amount or any partial amount. Card payments taken online are refunded through Stripe; manually recorded payments (cash, check, Zelle) are recorded as refunded while you return the money yourself.

Before you start

• You need an owner or admin login — refunds are blocked for other roles.
• Know which payment you're refunding: an invoice can hold several partial payments, and each is refunded on its own.
• A refund never un-sends or reopens the invoice; it adds a refund record on top of the payment.

Step 1 — Find the payment

1. Open Payments in the left sidebar.
2. Click the transaction row for the payment. The detail drawer opens with the amount, method, and — for invoice payments — a View invoice button that jumps to the invoice itself.

Step 2 — Issue the refund

1. Click Refund… in the drawer. The Issue refund window opens, showing the customer, the invoice number, and the refundable amount (anything already refunded is subtracted).
2. Pick Full refund — the entire remaining amount — or Other amount and type a partial figure. You can't exceed what's refundable.
3. For a manually recorded payment the window warns: "This payment was recorded manually" — the refund is recorded in Dispatch Bros, and you return the money to the customer yourself (cash back, a check, a Zelle transfer).
4. Click the red Refund button. Card refunds go to Stripe immediately; the payment's status flips to "Refunded" or "Partially refunded".

Step 3 — Send a refund receipt (optional)

Once a payment carries a refund, the drawer shows receipt buttons — clicking Email or Text opens an inline editor prefilled with the customer's contact ("Email the refund receipt to" / "Text the refund receipt to") that you can change before sending. The receipt links the customer back to their invoice page.

What your customer sees

The customer's public invoice link shows a banner for every refund: "Refund issued" with the amount and date. For card refunds it adds: "Card refunds usually appear on your statement within 5–10 business days." For manual refunds it notes the refund was recorded by the service provider.

Correcting a mistaken payment instead

If a payment was recorded in error and no money actually moved, don't refund it — delete it. On the invoice page, hover the payment in the Payments section and click the trash icon ("Delete this payment?" confirms). The invoice's Balance Due recomputes immediately.

Troubleshooting

• The Refund action is missing — the payment isn't refundable: it's already fully refunded, or your role isn't owner/admin.
• "Refund failed. Please try again." — the Stripe refund didn't go through (rare; usually a connectivity or account issue). Retry, and check your Stripe dashboard if it persists.
• The refunded total looks different from what I just did — the drawer keeps the higher of your local action and the webhook-confirmed total, so a refund issued elsewhere (for example in Stripe directly) can raise the number.
• Customer says the card refund hasn't arrived — card refunds take 5–10 business days to appear on a statement; point them to the refund banner on their invoice link.