Lesson 17

Payments, pricing and profit

Checkout, receipts, refunds and credits

The method you pick at checkout decides how you undo it later. A card charge refunds, a payment you marked yourself un-marks, and an unpaid invoice voids.

3 min read · Owner or front desk · Running day to day
Open in Petboost

A business rang support because their receipt process took too long. They had no process to shorten: the receipt sends itself when the payment is captured, and the part actually worth learning is how to take money back off a booking it should never have gone on.

Pick the method, then read the button

  1. Open the booking from Appointments.
  2. Under Payment Method, choose how the client is paying.
  3. Read what the button under the totals says it will do, then select it.

The button under the invoice spells out what pressing it does, and that wording is the difference between moving money and writing down money that already moved. Charge Card on File and Take in-person Payment go to Stripe. Paid by Cash, Mark paid by bank transfer and Mark as Paid only record it, which is why they are the ones a mistyped total can be taken back from.

Tip

You do not send the receipt. Petboost emails an itemised one as soon as a payment is captured, as long as Email the customer: booking updates is on. There is no SMS receipt.

Which undo you get depends on how it was paid

  1. Open the booking from Appointments.
  2. On the Invoice, open Manage.
  3. Select the one undo it offers: Issue Refund, Un-mark as Paid & Re-process or Void Invoice.

The invoice has its own Manage menu, separate from the one beside the status chip, and it holds three ways to take a payment back. You are only ever offered one of them: Issue Refund where Stripe holds the charge, Un-mark as Paid & Re-process where you marked it yourself, and Void Invoice where nobody has paid at all. Voiding sets every line to $0.00 and cannot be undone, so it belongs to the duplicate booking rather than the disputed one.

Trap

Issue Refund sits greyed on a cash or bank transfer booking and says why: "This was marked paid manually with no card charge recorded, so there is nothing to refund through Petboost." Hand the cash back yourself, then un-mark it.

A refund, in full or in part

  1. Open the booking from Appointments.
  2. On the Invoice, open Manage and select Issue Refund.
  3. Choose Full Refund, or choose Partial Refund and enter the amount.
  4. Choose a reason, answer Notify customer?, then select Process Refund.

Full Refund carries the amount already paid on its badge, so the figure is checkable before you commit. Partial Refund opens an amount field that will not accept more than Maximum amount, which is how you hand back the difference on an overcharge. Notify customer? has to be answered before Process Refund turns on, and Refund silently is the honest choice when you have already rung them. If they would rather leave the money with you, close this sheet and put it on their file as package credits instead.

Check

A refund reaches the customer's statement in about five to ten days. Stripe keeps its fee on the original payment and charges nothing for the refund itself.