Refund getting "Exceeds Sales Cap" error

Q: I'm trying to refund a credit card payment but when processing it gets an error like "Cannot Exceed Sales Cap".  How do I fix that?

A: All credit card Refunds must be processed with reference to a specific processed Payment transaction, and the refund cannot be larger than the payment (or possibly some maximum "cap" determined by your payment processor) -- this is to comply with new credit card fraud prevention rules requiring the original transaction reference for refunds.  You can't do "blind" refunds to a credit card any more.

By default, this is the most recent payment (the lowest in the transaction list).  As a result, if the total refunds done using that Payment are 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.  It may also be necessary to do the refund in multiple parts not exceeding the amount of each payment, if no single payment is large enough (or has a not-yet-refunded balance large enough) for the needed refund.  

So if you're getting this error you likely need to select a different payment than the most recent one.  To do that:

1. Click on the payment transaction line to select (e.g. on the word "Payment" or "Deposit") in the Type column of the transaction you are trying to refund -- do NOT click on the "Payment" or "Deposit" button.

2. You will see the word you clicked on highlighted, usually in blue.  If not, then you didn't click in the right place.

3. Click the Refund button to open the Refund dialog, and enter the amount to be refunded from that payment.  

If some of the selected payment has been previously refunded, then the amount available to refund from that particular payment will be reduced accordingly.  For instance if you had a payment of $100 and already refunded $60 from it, then you can only refund the remaining $40 from it.  Any additional amount would need to be refunded from a different payment -- repeat the process as needed, selecting each payment to take some of the refund from.

Note: 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.

Note that if the credit card has expired, then it cannot be used and may not appear as the card being refunded.  Likewise, if the customer's credit card from the original payment is no longer active, or if you have changed credit card processing services since the payment was done, then the refund transaction will fail and you will need to refund the customer in some other way.