Refunds, voids and adjustments

Sidebar: Business Settings → Payment Settings → Transactions.

All refunds happen here, not on the invoice, not on the appointment, and not at Checkout. Find the payment in the transactions list and refund from it.

What you can refund

• The full amount
• A partial amount — for a service that was only half delivered, or a goodwill gesture
• The tip only — leaving the sale intact, which is what you want when a tip was mis-entered

Give a reason and add an internal note. The note is for you and your team, not the customer, and future-you will want it.

What happens automatically

• The money goes back to the original payment method. There is no way to redirect a refund to a different card or to cash — that is a rule of card processing, not an Alaga limitation.
• Processing fees come back proportionally. Refund half the sale, get half the fee back.
• A full refund returns products to stock. If the customer brought back a bag of food, your inventory corrects itself.

Timing

The customer will not see it immediately. Refunds typically take a few working days to appear, and can take longer depending on their bank. Tell them that at the counter or they will ring you about it in two days.

There is no void

Alaga has no separate "void" that erases a transaction. A refund is the mechanism, and the original payment stays on the record with the refund against it.

That is the correct behaviour for your accounts — a day's takings that quietly changes after the fact is not something you want. It does mean a mistyped sale leaves two entries rather than none.

When a refund is the wrong tool

A price entered incorrectly, before payment. Fix the invoice or the cart. Nothing has been charged, so there is nothing to refund.

A customer disputing a charge with their bank. That is a dispute, handled under Payment Settings → Disputes, and refunding while a dispute is open can leave you out of pocket twice. Respond to the dispute instead.

A cash sale. There is no card payment to reverse. Hand the money back and record it so your day still balances.

A deposit against a cancelled booking. Decide whether your cancellation policy means the deposit is retained. If you are returning it, refund it; if you are keeping it, do nothing — see Rescheduling, cancelling and no-shows.

Who can do it

Refunds are limited to managers and owners. Front-desk staff cannot refund, which is deliberate.

Keeping it clean

• Refund from the original payment, not by creating a negative sale.
• Write the reason. "Customer unhappy with groom" tells you something in six months; a blank field does not.
• Check the day's End of Day report after refunding, so the figures you close on are the ones that actually happened.