Make a refund

If you want to return money to a guest because you had to cancel the booking or the booking was changed, the refund will be handled depending on your payment settings and policy settings.

💡 Note:  In case you need to make a refund that is outside your cancellation policy or for a different amount than calculated by your cancellation policy, you need to make a manual refund before you cancel the booking.

Read about:

Refunds for imported bookings

Bookings imported from external channels need to be canceled and refunded in the following way:

Channel Cancellation/refund
Airbnb Professional needs to be canceled and refunded in Airbnb.
Booking.com
  • If the booking was charged in Booking.com, it needs to be canceled and refunded in Booking.com. 
  • If the booking was charged via credit card in Lodgify, it needs to be manually refunded in Lodgify, and then needs to be canceled it in Booking.com.
Expedia
  • If the booking was charged in Expedia, it needs to be canceled and refunded in Expedia. 
  • If the booking was charged via credit card in Lodgify, it needs to be manually refunded in Lodgify, and then needs to be canceled in Expedia.
HomeAway/VRBO
  • If the booking was automatically imported into Lodgify via API (integrated reservation), it needs to be canceled and refunded in Lodgify. Cancellations and refunds for these bookings work exactly as for direct Lodgify bookings. See below.
  • If the booking was imported manually (so it already existed before the connection), it needs to be canceled and refunded in HomeAway/VRBO.

Refunds with automatic refund function activated

In case a cancellation policy has triggered a refund in the system, and you have activated the automatic refund function in your credit card gateway settings (Payyo, Stripe, Braintree, Authorize.Net), the money will be automatically refunded without any further action from your side. This however requires that the booking had an active Policy & Quote workflow, and was paid by credit card.
If any of these conditions are not met, the refund will need to be done manually. For specific use cases, take a look at this article.

The scheduled refunds are triggered every 4 hours, so if a user cancels a booking that should trigger a refund automatically, it could take up to 4 hours to see the refund done.

💡 Note: This setting is only available for Lodgify bookings which have been made through your website, or created manually. It is not currently possible to schedule automatic refunds for reservations made through Booking.com or Expedia.

Manually issue a refund in Lodgify

If the automatic refund function in your credit card gateway has not been enabled, or you are using Paypal, Bank Transfer, Cash, or the reservation was made via Booking.com or Expedia but was charged in Lodgify, you will need to manually issue a refund in Lodgify.

Follow these steps to register a refund in Lodgify:

  1. Refund your guest on your side.
  2. Go to your Account Menu in the bottom left corner and select Reservations.
  3. Select the booking you want to edit, go to the Payment collection box, and click the + icon next to the transaction you want to refund.
If... then...

You used credit card to collect the payment, but haven't activated the automatic refund

  1. Select Issue Refund.
    💡 Note: Mark as refunded only serves to update your transaction record with a refund.
    Screenshot 2025-01-30 at 11.18.04.png
  2. A new window slides in where you can insert the amount that you want to refund.
  3. Then tick the box to confirm that your payment gateway (Stripe, Braintree, Authorize.Net, or Lodgify Payments) will refund the confirmed amount to the guest. 
  4. A new window opens up to send a message to your guest and notify them of the issued refund.

Your booking did not have an active Policy & Quote workflow

You want to make a partial refund outside your Policy & Quote workflow

Your booking was made in Booking.com or Expedia but was charged in Lodgify

Paypal, Bank Transfer, or cash to collect the payment

💡 Note: In this case, refunds in the Lodgify Reservation System are currently only to ensure your Transaction Records are up-to-date and reflect your payments received/refunded correctly. You will still need to make the actual payment to your guest via one of the channels mentioned above.
  1. Select Mark as refunded.Screenshot 2025-01-14 at 16.26.29.png
  2. A new window slides in where you can insert the amount that you refunded.
  3. A new window opens up to send a message to your guest and notify them of the refund you issued.
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