Skimmer Billing - How to Refund a Payment

To learn how to issue payment refunds and then reconcile your accounts with Skimmer Billing, see the video below. Or, if you prefer, scroll past the video to view our step-by-step text instructions.

Step-by-step instructions . . .

1

Refunds happen. Maybe the customer was overcharged, or they didn’t receive a product or service that was on their bill. Whatever the reason, the process for issuing a refund should be quick and easy and painless, and Skimmer Billing makes that possible. Whether the payment was online or manual–like cash or check–if you have Admin access, you can process partial or full refunds directly through Skimmer Billing. On the website, start by navigating to Billing and then Payments. Find the invoice, and click the fourth icon on the right, the circular arrow. This is the Refund button.

2

Enter the amount you want to refund (and keep in mind that the refunded amount cannot exceed the original payment). For demonstration purposes, we’ll refund only a portion of the total amount. Select the reason for the refund, then save.

Now you can see there’s a change to the payment status and a new alert icon. The status has changed to Partial Refund, and if you hover over the alert icon, it will let you know how much was refunded.

If we had refunded the entire payment, the status would have changed to Refunded.

3

Now we’ll show you how to reconcile an invoice after a refund, and there’s more than one way to do this. Start by going to the Invoices tab and finding your invoice. Here you can see that when you refund a payment, the invoice amount due will increase by the amount you refunded. Depending on the previous state of the invoice, the status will revert back to what it was prior to the payment – either Sent, Overdue, or Partial Paid.

How you reconcile the invoice depends on the situation. For a partial refund, you’ll need to edit the invoice itself. To do this, start by either clicking More and then Edit, or clicking Details and then the Edit button once you’re viewing the invoice.

4

In the Line Items area, click Add New, then add a negative line item for the amount of the refund. You can name it whatever you like – and you’ll probably find it helpful to name it something like Refund, or a phrase or term that lets you know exactly why this line item is here. When you’re ready, click Save on the line item, then Save the invoice. This will return the total amount due back to zero.

5

To reconcile after a full refund, there are two scenarios to consider. If a payment was fully refunded because of an error in the invoice itself, you’ll likely want to refund the full payment and then Void the invoice. Voiding an invoice zeroes out the original amount billed to your general sales ledger. Note that a voided invoice will remain in the system for accounting and reporting purposes.

6

If, however, a customer accidentally paid with the wrong card and wants to pay again with a different one, you’ll just want to refund the payment in full. Than the status of that invoice will automatically revert back to what it was before the payment, which will typically be either Sent or Overdue. Once it’s refunded and back to that original status, it’s ready again to accept a payment. Once that new payment is submitted in full, the status will go back to Paid.