Selling · 2 of 3 · 2 min read
Refunds and voids
Undo a sale correctly, and know which one you want.
On this page
Two different things that both look like "undo". Picking the right one keeps your drawer and your books agreeing with each other.
Void
The sale should never have happened. Rung up twice, wrong customer, cancelled before the customer left.
A void reverses the whole sale: stock goes back, the ledger entries are reversed, and the sale is marked voided rather than deleted. It stays visible in reports, because a sale that disappears without trace is exactly what a void is not for.
Refund
The sale happened and is being partly or wholly given back. The customer returns something, or you agree a reduction after the fact.
A refund records what came back, at what price, and how the money was returned. You can refund some lines rather than all of them.
Which one
If the money already went in the drawer and is coming back out, that is a refund. If the sale was a mistake that never really happened, that is a void.
The practical difference is your end-of-day count. A void removes the sale from takings; a refund leaves the sale and records money going back out. Only one of those will match what is physically in the drawer.
If you look up a serial number or a batch, voided sales appear on its timeline. Without that, an item that was sold and then voided would look like it had never moved — and someone would eventually spend an afternoon working out where it went.
Refunding to something other than the original method
You can refund to a different method — cash back on a card sale, or to store credit. Two things to keep in mind:
- Your drawer is affected by cash refunds and not by card ones, so the end-of-day count depends on which you chose
- Refunding to store credit keeps the money in the business and is often what the customer would rather have
Who is allowed to
Refunds are a permission. As with price overrides, restrict it — not because staff are dishonest, but because a refund is the simplest way to take money out of a till, and requiring a supervisor makes it a conversation rather than a decision.
Loyalty and points
If the original sale earned points or was partly paid with them, the refund unwinds that too. The split between what was paid in money and what was paid in points is worked out from the original sale rather than guessed at, so a customer cannot end up better off by returning something.
Something here wrong or missing? Tell us — we would rather fix it than have you work around it.