Refunds

How to issue a refund

Both PayPal and Stripe allow us to refund payments, including ACH (bank transfer) payments.

In both cases, the the first step is to find the contribution in CiviCRM.

Then, click the “More” button and select “Record Refund.”

  1. Stripe: You are done! The refund is automatically processed via Stripe.

  2. PayPal: The refund is only recorded in CiviCRM. You also have to login to PayPal and cancel the payment there. Then, you are done.

Be sure to adjust the membership expiration date.

When a member makes two payments, their expiration date will be extended for two terms. If you refund one payment, you must edit the membership and change the expiration data back one term. Otherwise they get the benefit of paying twice while only paying once. Note: this is also true if they are canceling. We use the expiration date to keep statistics on how many members are joining and how many are leaving. We rely on an accurate expiration date to have accurate numbers.

Our refund policy

If a group tells us they are leaving and they do not have a recurring payment…

  1. If they want a partial refund because they left mid-term, the answer is no: we don’t give pro-rated refunds
  2. If they made an honest mistake and accidentally paid for the next year after they communicated that they wanted to leave, the answer is yes, we issue a refund

If a group expires and they do not have a recurring payment…

No refunds.

If a group tells us they are leaving and they have a recurring payment:

  1. We cancel any recurring payments right away
  2. If they tells us they want to leave retroactively and get a refund for past payments - then we do not give a refund
  3. If a group says they want to leave and we forgot to cancel their recurring payment, we would refund any payment made after they requested to leave

If a group expires and they have a recurring payment…

This is unusual!

  1. We cancel the recurring payment when we disable the membership
  2. If we forget to cancel the recurring payment, we refund all payments made after we disabled the membership