These are called Automatic refunds as when you process refunds that are connected to your payment gateway. Once you’ve processed this type of refund in your WooCommerce Admin, no further actions are necessary.
Check: Review the documentation or support of your payment gateway on whether automatic refunds are available. Most automatic payments fully support this.
Scope: Refunds normally extend to products, taxes, and shipping fees. However, transaction fees charged by the payment gateway will likely be lost and not refunded.
Setup: Make sure that your API settings are set and test your payment gateway and refunds while in sandbox or test mode:
WooCommerce: Refunds can be processed through the Orders. It is possible to process full or partial refunds:
Go to: WooCommerce > Orders.
Select the order to refund.
Go to the order summary, and select “Refund” to start.
Specify the quantity of the product(s) to be refunded in the text box(es) that appear for each line item. The refund amount will automatically adjust based on the products refunded. If inventory levels are not managed, you can also enter the Refund amount, without adjusting the product quantity.
If the quantities of items are not set when issuing a refund then the order is not marked as refunded and the email that is sent will say “partial refund.”
Order Notes in the right sidebar will log refunds. Keep an eye on the order notes to learn if it’s been logged or if there’s an error message. A successful “Refunded” message in order notes concludes the refund.
Note: This does not refund the customer via the payment gateway. Continue on to your payment gateway’s dashboard to start the refund process there, or transfer the money manually back to them.
Check: Consult the documentation or support of your payment gateway on whether manual refunds are available. You will either need to:
Log in to your payment method account and process the refund there.
Transfer the money from your bank account manually.
Scope: Refunds normally extend to products, taxes, and shipping fees. However, transaction fees charged by the payment gateway will likely be lost and not refunded.
WooCommerce: Refunds can be processed through your Orders page. To manually refund an order:
Go to: WooCommerce > Orders.
Select the order to refund.
Go to the order summary, and select “Refund” to start.
Specify the quantity of the product(s) to be refunded in the text box(es) that appear for each line item. The refund amount will automatically adjust based on the products refunded. If inventory levels are not managed, you can also enter the Refund amount, without adjusting the product quantity.
If the quantities of items are not set when issuing a refund then the order is not marked as refunded and the email that is sent will say “partial refund.”
Add refund notes, if desired.
Select “Refund $XX.XX manually”.
Items selected for a refund will be noted as refunded. Once the refund has been applied to the order, it will look like this:
It is possible for the refund quantity to be entered as a fraction of the whole, which is useful for calculating associated taxes automatically in scenarios where a partial refund is issued.
While the quantity field will always be rounded back up to the nearest whole number after the refund is completed, the tax field calculations will remain unaffected and reflect as the fraction entered prior to the refund being submitted.
In the example below, £13 of the Cost needed to be refunded, and an equal percentage of the taxes. If we type the amount directly into the Total field, the taxes will not be calculated automatically and needs to be worked out manually. However, by working out what fraction our refund amount is of the total, and entering that in the Qty field, the other tax fields are automatically populated.
Here’s the calculation: [Refund Amount]/[Total] = [Qty] or for this example 13/39.13 = 0.33222591 – the fraction is copy-pasted into the Qty field and the Tab key pressed.
