Follow these steps at your club’s own website. Available screens and actions depend on your account’s role and the programs your club has enabled.
Overview
The refund mechanism is determined by invoice kind, not by staff preference. The platform enforces this. Attempting the wrong path is rejected.
Which path applies
| Invoice kind | Refund method |
|---|---|
| Camp, merch, event, facility, misc | Stripe refund (money returns to the card/bank used) |
| Dues | Account credit, not a Stripe refund |
| Initiation / bond | Mailed check, always a refund payable. See Relinquishment |
If you open an invoice and its refund action isn't offered, or is blocked with a note, that's this rule. The invoice's kind doesn't support a Stripe refund. Dues corrections go out as account credit; initiation/bond money always goes back by check, never as a card refund.
Issuing a Stripe refund
For an eligible invoice (camp/merch/event/facility/misc):
Open the invoice. From the household's record or a deep link, it appears under Admin › Invoice (see Invoices, payments, and credits).
On the payment you want to refund, use Refund via Stripe. You can refund the full remaining amount or enter a specific amount.
Confirm: this cannot be undone.
The refund is recorded immediately as pending. Its status then converges to its final state once Stripe finishes processing and the webhook (or the nightly reconciliation sweep, as a backstop) confirms it. So don't be surprised if a refund still reads "pending" for a short while right after you click it.
If a credit was already issued for the same money (for example, a camp cancellation credit), the invoice page will warn you before you also refund via Stripe. Refunding on top of an existing credit sends the money back twice.
A payment that arrived on a cancelled invoice
If money lands on an invoice that was already cancelled (voided) — a lesson hold that expired while the member was on the payment page, a camp seat cancelled under an open checkout — the platform does not un-cancel the invoice and confirms nothing. Instead the treasurer gets a task, Refund a payment that arrived on a cancelled invoice, naming the invoice and the amount. Refund it in full from the household's billing page and close the task. One task per payment, even if Stripe delivers the event twice.
Closed accounting periods block refunds
Refunds, and bond-refund check-sends, are blocked once today's accounting period is closed under Admin › Reports › Accounting periods. The check runs against the current date, not the date of the invoice or payment being refunded. So refunding an old invoice is fine as long as the current month is still open, but nothing can be refunded or check-sent at all while the current month is closed, even against a brand-new invoice. If this month is closed, a treasurer or admin can reopen it from the Accounting periods tab first (closing and reopening are both treasurer/admin-only actions).
Chargebacks and disputes
If a member's bank reverses a charge (a dispute/chargeback), you don't do anything to trigger this. It's initiated by the cardholder's bank. The platform handles it automatically:
The payment is marked failed.
The invoice reopens.
If a bond claim had been made against that payment, it's clawed back.
An internal ops alert is generated so staff know to look at the household.
If the club wins the dispute, the reversal undoes itself automatically too: the payment is restored and the invoice re-closes as paid. There's no manual cleanup step on either side. But a household with a reopened invoice from a lost dispute may need a conversation about repayment.