Refund or cancel a booking

These are two separate actions, and this is the single most important thing to understand before you press anything:

Cancel frees up the equipment and stops the customer using the booking. It does not send any money back.
Refund sends money back. It does not cancel the booking.

If a customer is not coming and should have their money back, you do both. In whichever order you prefer — neither blocks the other.

Cancelling a booking

What it does

The booking is marked as Canceled.
The equipment is released, so the slot becomes bookable again.
The customer's unlock link stops working. If they try to open the lock, they are told the booking is cancelled.

If the booking had reminder emails scheduled, check the Messages list on the booking afterwards to see what is still queued.

What it does not do

No money moves. Nothing is refunded, not partly and not fully. The payment stays exactly as it was.
Rentalbuddy does not send a cancellation email — there is no such automatic message. If you want the customer to know, contact them yourself.

How to cancel

Open the booking under Bookings.
Press Cancel in the row of buttons at the top. (You can also cancel from the booking list with the Cancel booking action.)
A confirmation appears — Cancel booking?, "Are you sure to cancel this booking?"
Press Cancel booking to confirm.

This cannot be undone from the admin. Once a booking is cancelled, the Cancel button disappears and there is no un-cancel button. If it was a mistake, make a new booking for the customer.

Everything else you can change on a booking — times, products, locks — is in Edit, move or cancel a booking.

Refunding money

Refunds happen on the booking itself. You do not need to open Stripe.

Which payments can be refunded

The refund action only appears on payments that were paid online through Stripe and went through successfully. On the booking's Payment list, those lines show Stripe under Payment method.

Lines you registered by hand — Pay on site, Invoice, Swish, a card terminal and so on — have no refund action, because Rentalbuddy never held that money. Those lines have a delete action instead, which only removes the record from the booking; it does not move any money. Hand back cash or make a bank transfer the way you normally would.

How to refund

Open the booking under Bookings.
Scroll to Payment. Each payment is one line, with Amount, Payment method, a status, a Payment ID and a time.
On the line you want to refund, press the refund action (the circular arrow, labelled Refund).
The Refund box opens with an amount already filled in. Check this figure before continuing — it is a suggestion, not necessarily what you want to send back.
Change the amount if you are only refunding part of it.
Press the button at the bottom. It reads Repay followed by the amount, so you can see exactly what you are about to send back.

Yes, you can refund part of it

You can type any amount up to what is still refundable on that payment. You can also do it in several goes — refund a part today, and the rest later — until the payment is used up.

The one thing you cannot do is refund more than the customer actually paid. The box will not let you:

The largest amount it accepts is the payment amount minus anything already refunded on it.
Type more and you get the warning "You can't refund more than X", and the button will not submit.
Under the field it also states the ceiling: "The amount must not exceed X (payment size)."
Once a payment is fully refunded, its refund action disappears altogether.

This is the safety net operators ask about. You cannot overshoot by accident.

What happens straight afterwards

A new line appears under the payment showing the refund, with a negative amount and the method Stripe (return).
The booking's amounts update: Paid goes down, Left to pay goes up.
The payment status label changes. Refund everything the customer paid and it becomes Refunded. Refund only part and it becomes Partially paid — that is expected, not an error.

A refund cannot be undone. There is no "cancel refund" button, in Rentalbuddy or in Stripe. If you refund too much, the only way back is to ask the customer to pay again. Read the amount twice before pressing Repay.

What the customer sees

The money. Rentalbuddy hands the refund to Stripe immediately, but the money does not appear on the customer's account instantly. It travels back through the card networks and the customer's bank, which typically takes several days. Neither you nor Rentalbuddy can speed that up.

If a customer asks where it is, look up the refund in your Stripe dashboard — it carries its own status there.
Emails. Rentalbuddy does not send a refund email and does not send a cancellation email. If Stripe is set up to email card receipts, the customer may get a refund notification from Stripe; that is a Stripe setting, not a Rentalbuddy one. When in doubt, assume the customer has heard nothing and tell them yourself.
The booking. After you cancel, the customer's unlock link no longer opens anything.

Common situations

The customer cancels well in advance and gets everything back. Refund the full amount on the payment line, then cancel the booking so the equipment is released.

The customer cancels late and you keep a fee. Refund only the part you are giving back — type the reduced amount in the Refund box. The booking will show Partially paid. Then cancel the booking.

The customer just doesn't turn up and keeps nothing back. Cancel the booking only. Do not refund. The money stays with you.

Only one product out of several should be refunded. There is no per-product refund. Work out the amount yourself and refund that figure from the payment.

The booking was paid in cash or on site. There is nothing to refund in the system. Settle it with the customer directly, and delete the manual payment line only if you want the booking's figures to reflect that.

You cancelled and then realised money should go back. No problem — the refund action is still on the booking after cancelling. Open it and refund as usual.