How Refunds Work
Access requirements. Same "Transactions" permission as Customer Orders — view access to open the return form, edit access to submit it.
Only completed Customer Orders can be refunded this way. "Return items" only shows up on a completed order built in Customer Orders — never on an ecommerce order, and never on one that's still Draft or Approved.
Refunds go back to the original tender by default. Unless your account has cross-tender refunds turned on, a refund always returns to whatever payment method the customer originally used.
A card payment can only be refunded onto cash, check, or a gift card — never back onto the card itself. If cross-tender refunds are enabled for your account, a card-paid order becomes returnable, but you'll have to pick one of those three destinations — there's no path to push money back onto a card from here.
A house-account order can only refund to the house account, and nothing else can refund to a house account. That direction only ever goes one way.
It restocks automatically, every time, with no way to opt out. Every returned unit goes back into your stock count the moment you submit the return — unlike a no-receipt return at the terminal, there's no choice to leave a spoiled item off the shelf.
It doesn't touch loyalty points. Unlike a return processed at the register, refunding a sale from here doesn't claw back or restore any loyalty points the customer earned or spent on that sale.
There's no undo. Once you submit a return, it's final — there's no reversal from Back Office.
Where to Access Each Feature
To… | Go to |
Refund a completed Customer Order | Customers → Customer orders → open the order → "⋮" → "Return items" |
Refunding a Customer Order
Step 1
Open the completed order you're refunding from Customers → Customer orders.
Step 2
Click "⋮," then click "Return items."
Step 3
Select the line item(s) and quantity you're refunding. You can only return up to what's still outstanding on each line, and you can come back later to return more if you don't refund everything at once.
Step 4
If a "Return method" option is shown, choose Cash, Check, or Gift card (a redemption code is required for Gift card). This only appears when cross-tender refunds are turned on for your account — otherwise the refund automatically goes back to the original tender, with nothing to choose.
Note: if the order was paid with a house account, there's no choice to make here — the refund always goes back to the house account.
Step 5
Click "Record refund."
Important: this is final. There's no way to reverse a refund once you click "Record refund," so double-check the items, quantities, and destination first.
What About No-Receipt Returns?
A return with no original order to tie it to — a "blind return" — is recorded by a cashier at the terminal, not from Back Office. Back Office only lets you view one afterward, or assign a customer to it; there's no way to create or edit one here.
What About Ecommerce Orders?
Refunding an ecommerce order (DoorDash and similar) after it's already been fulfilled isn't possible from Back Office. The only related action available is canceling an order before it's fulfilled — which voids the original card authorization rather than refunding a completed sale.
Troubleshooting
"Return items" isn't available on an order: it only works on a completed order built in Customer Orders — check that the order isn't still Draft or Approved, and that it isn't an ecommerce order.
You want to refund a card payment, but there's no "original tender" option: card-paid orders can only be refunded if cross-tender refunds are turned on for your account, and even then only onto cash, check, or a gift card — never back onto the card.
A customer's loyalty points weren't adjusted after a refund you processed here: that's expected — refunds from Back Office don't touch loyalty points at all, unlike a return at the register.
You need to undo a refund you just submitted: there's no way to — double-check everything before clicking "Record refund" next time.
A customer wants to return something with no receipt or order: that has to be handled at the register as a no-receipt return — Back Office can't create one, only show you one that's already been recorded.