Refunds

Refunds are entered the same way as Payments (using the same dialog), except that the Amount will default to the negative balance due.  This is because the balance due itself should be negative at the time you enter the refund, indicating that a balance is due the customer.  If there is not a negative balance due, a Refund cannot be done.  Thus the Amount shown in the Enter Refund window will actually be shown as a positive value, equal to the amount to be refunded.  (Make sure you enter a positive amount here if you enter it manually.)

Point of Sale (POS) Refunds -- Returns for POS sales are done differently -- see the Returns section in the Point of Sale documentation for details.

Reminder:  When you need to issue a refund to a customer for charges already added, there's a recommended procedure to keep things in balance.  You must first enter "negative" charges to offset the charges for which you want to give a refund (e.g. for days not stayed or merchandise returned), and then enter a Refund transaction.  This will allow the transactions to balance out.  

The easiest way to enter the negative charges, if you are using version 8.0 or later, is to use the "Reverse Charges" button. If any Charges/Discounts/Taxes are selected (and only those types),  a "Reverse Charges" button will appear at the bottom.  Click this button and it will add equivalent transactions to the ones selected but with negative amounts, effectively reversing those charges in one step.  (You still need to do the Refund function to show the money refunded.)

For users prior versions (before 8.0), or if you need to only reverse a partial quantity, entering a negative charge can be done either manually (use the Charge function and enter a negative Quantity, but not a negative Each amount), or by using Select Rates if it's a rental adjustment (select the rate and enter the number of days, etc. as a positive amount and Add it as usual, but check the "Invert Amounts" box before clicking Done).  

After entering the negative charge transactions, the reservation balance should be negative so you can use this Refund function (click the Refund button) to enter the amount refunded.

Processing Credit Card Refunds -- If you are doing credit card processing through Campground Master, then you will usually want to process the refund as a credit to their card as well.  By default, when you click the Refund button and the most recent Payment or Deposit transaction has credit card information, then it will automatically populate the credit card information from that payment, so the refund will be processed to that card.  Note however that in versions after May 2019, this will also contain the "Transaction ID" of that payment which is required now by most merchants to process refunds.  As a result, if the refund (or combination of refunds) is larger than the amount of that payment, you will get an error similar to "Exceeds sales cap".

Therefore you may need to select a payment other than the most recent payment to reference for the refund, possibly even doing the refund in multiple parts not exceeding the amount of each payment.  To do this, simply click on the Payment (or Deposit) transaction that you want it to reference in the transaction list before clicking the Refund button (this requires version "10.0 rev.g" or later, otherwise it will always use the last credit card payment for reference, or possibly not use any reference at all).  The credit card information from that transaction will be used.  Note however that if the credit card has expired, then it cannot be used and may not appear.  Likewise, if the customer's credit card from the original payment is no longer active, the refund transaction will fail, and you will need to refund the customer in some other way.

Refund Checks -- If you issue refunds by check, then you will probably want to add a new Payment Method called "Refund check" that you use for those, instead of just selecting "Check" as the payment method.  This way it will show those separately on the Receipts by Payment Method report, for instance, instead of just subtracting them from the total of Checks received.  See Pick Lists for adding the new Payment Method.