Issuing a Refund
Sometimes a donor asks for their gift back, or a gift was entered by mistake. Here's how to refund a payment made through eCatholic Payments, and what to expect afterward.
In This Article
Before You Refund
A refund sends money back to the donor's original card or bank account. It can't be sent anywhere else, and it can't be undone once it's submitted, so it's worth double checking the order before you confirm.
Here's the part that catches people off guard: the processing fee on the original gift is not returned to your parish when you issue a refund. If you refund the full amount a donor paid, your parish ends up short by whatever the fee was. See What Happens After a Refund below for a real example.
Refunding an Order
- Go to Activity > Orders and open the order you want to refund. See Viewing Orders and Order Details.
- In the Overview panel, select Refund.
- Choose Full Refund to send back everything the donor paid, or Partial Refund to enter a specific Refund Amount instead.
- Review the breakdown before confirming. It shows Total Paid, the Current Order Balance (after fees), the Refund amount, and the Remaining Order Balance (after refund).
- Select Refund to complete it, or Cancel to back out.
What Happens After a Refund
You'll see a green confirmation message: "The refund was successfully processed."
A few things to know:
- The order's status stays Completed, it doesn't change to "Refunded." See Understanding Transaction and Order Statuses.
- The order's Net Order Amount and the Net Amount on its order item update to reflect the refund. In the example above, a $12.00 gift with a $0.66 fee (and no fee coverage from the donor) was fully refunded, leaving a Net Order Amount of -$0.66. The parish had already received $11.34 after the fee was taken out, then chose to give the donor back the full $12.00, resulting in a shortfall equal to the original fee.
- A brand new transaction shows up with a Refund type and an Approved status, separate from the original payment. See Viewing and Filtering Transactions.
Note:
It doesn't matter whether the donor chose to cover the processing fee themselves. In the Refund window, the Remaining Order Balance is always calculated as the Current Order Balance (after fees) minus the Refund amount, and a Full Refund will always match the full amount the donor paid. That means the result works out the same in either case; the same shortfall equal to the fee. In other words, there isn’t really a way to fully refund a gift without your parish ending up losing the processing fee on it.