Refunding a payment or reversing a write-off – Soapbox Support Center

With the Auctions app, you can give a bidder money back from a payment they made, or undo a write-off you recorded by mistake. You do both from the Payments and Adjustments section of the bidder's checkout.

Refund or remove?

A refund undoes a payment, not a purchase. After a refund, the bidder owes that money again, so their balance goes back up.

Important: To refund a bidder for an item they won't receive, first remove the item from their checkout with Remove under Line items. Their status then reads Refund due, and Take a payment shows "This bidder is owed $X. Refund it from a payment in Payments and Adjustments." Then refund that amount from one of their payments. If you refund without removing the item first, the bidder still owes for it. See Adjusting or removing a line item.

Refunding a payment

Open the Auctions Manager.
Click the title of the auction you want to manage.
Click the Checkouts tab.
Click the bidder's name, or click Open on their row.
Under Payments and Adjustments, find the payment and click Refund.
Check Amount. It starts at the full amount that can still be refunded from this payment. Enter a smaller amount to make a partial refund.
Enter a Reason (required).
Click Refund.

Refund appears only on payments whose status is Captured and that haven't been fully refunded. The dialog tells you the most you can refund and where the money goes, for example "Refund up to $120.00 to Visa ••4242" or "Refund up to $50.00 to cash".

What happens after a refund

Card payments are refunded to the card through your payment processor. A card refund can't be undone.
Cash and check payments are recorded as refunded only. No money moves, so hand the money back to the bidder yourself.
Processing fees are returned in proportion. If the payment included a processing fee, the same share of the fee is refunded with it. For example, refunding half the payment returns half the fee. The bidder's balance goes back up by the amount refunded, less the share of the fee returned with it.
The payment's row shows your reason under the method. Its amount notes "$X of the fee refunded" when part of a fee was returned. After a partial refund, the row stays Captured, notes "$X refunded", and you can refund the rest later. Once the full amount is refunded, its status reads Refunded and Refund no longer appears.
The bidder isn't emailed. Let them know about the refund yourself.
The refund is also logged under Communications & activity as a payment event. Tick Payment events under Also show to see it.

Reversing a write-off

If you wrote off a balance by mistake, you can reverse it so the bidder owes that amount again.

Open the Auctions Manager.
Click the title of the auction you want to manage.
Click the Checkouts tab.
Click the bidder's name, or click Open on their row.
Under Payments and Adjustments, find the Write-off row, whose status reads Written off, and click Reverse.
Check the details in the Reverse write-off dialog. It shows the amount, who recorded the write-off and when, their reason, and the bidder's balance before and after.
Enter a Reason (required).
Click Reverse write-off.

A reversal always cancels the whole write-off. To collect only part of it, reverse it, then write off the part you won't collect.

The write-off stays in the history, marked Reversed. Its amount is struck through and it reads "Reversed by [name] on [date] — [reason]". The bidder isn't emailed when a write-off is reversed, so let them know they owe the balance again. To collect it, see Taking a payment from a bidder or Sending a bidder a checkout link.

Messages you might see

Message	What to do
"Enter an amount between $0.01 and $X."	Enter an amount no larger than what can still be refunded from this payment.
"Enter a reason for the refund."	Enter a Reason (required), then click Refund again.
"Enter a reason for reversing this write-off."	Enter a Reason (required), then click Reverse write-off again.
"Refunded $X."	The refund is complete.
"Write-off reversed. Balance is now $X."	The reversal is complete, and the bidder owes the balance shown.

Important: If you see "The payment processor returned $X (payment …) but the reversal could not be recorded. The bidder is still shown as owing it.", the money has already gone back to the bidder's card. Don't refund it again. Find the payment in your Stripe Dashboard using the payment reference shown in the message to confirm the refund.

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