If you want to return money to a guest because you had to cancel the booking or the booking was changed, it depends on your payment settings and policy settings, how the refund will be handled.
💡 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 |
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| Expedia |
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| HomeAway/VRBO |
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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, have 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:
- Go to your Main Menu in the top left corner and select Reservations.
- 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 you used | then... |
|---|---|
|
Credit card, to collect the payment but haven't activated the automatic refund |
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your booking did not have an active Policy & Quote workflow |
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you want to make a partial refund outside of your Policy & Quote workflow |
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your booking was made in Booking.com or Expedia but was charged in Lodgify |
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| 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. |
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How fees are refunded
When accepting payments through credit cards, certain fees are charged per transaction depending on the activated payment gateway. When issuing a refund to the guest, these fees will be refunded to you in proportion to the amount.
Example:
If the transaction fee was 3€ and you return 50% of the prepayments received, you will be refunded 1,50€ of the transaction fee.
See below for more details:
| If the payment gateway is... | then... |
|---|---|
| Stripe |
If you refund the partial or total value of a booking within Lodgify we will refund the partial/total Lodgify Transaction Fee. 💡 Note: For information about the refund of Stripe's direct fees, please contact their customer support. 💡 Note: If you handle a refund directly from your Stripe account, contact their support to inquire about the refunding of the transaction fee. |
| Lodgify Payments | If you refund the partial or total value of a booking within Lodgify we will refund the partial/total fee charged for the received transaction. |
| Braintree | If you refund the partial or total value of a booking within Lodgify we will refund the Transaction Fee at the end of the month (or if in the same month, the Transaction Fee won't be invoiced). Braintree will refund the partial/total Braintree Fee charged for the received transaction. |
| Authorize.Net | If you refund the partial or total value of a booking within Lodgify we will refund the Transaction Fee at the end of the month (or if in the same month, the Transaction Fee won't be invoiced). Authorize.Net will refund the partial/total Authorize.Net Fee charged for the received transaction. |
| Paypal | As refunds for Paypal payments need to be handled manually outside of Lodgify, the Transaction Fee cannot be refunded. |