Refund a Payment

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Overview

Refund Payment in Full

Partial Refund

Credit/Debit Card Refunds

Refunds and Reservation Credit

Overview

We know refunds happen and every park has different refund policies. So we wanted to offer flexible refund options for you. In Firefly, all refunds are done at the payment level. Payments can be found under a reservation's Charges tab and each refund will be made from a payment's Options. Any payment can be refunded to the original payment method, cash, check, or reservation credit.

Refund a Payment in Full

This scenario will walk through best practices in a case where you offer a full refund on a payment. 

1. Navigate to the Payment you wish to Refund (typically this is done at the Search Reservations page, then search for the reservation). Then go to the charges tab.
2. Click the Options button next to the specific payment needing a refund
3. Click Refund
4. Indicate the type of refund you wish to make (for this example, we will Refund Entire Payment Excluding Processing Fees)
5. Choose the refund method
6. Choose to email the payment receipt (or not)
7. Click Save

After you process a refund, you will notice the original charge shows an unpaid balance due. Since the guest does not actually owe this amount, and won't be paying again, you must zero out the charge.

Click the 3 dots on the charge, then click Zero out charge.
You will see the charge update to show $0.00 and paid.

Correctly Balanced Charge

Partial Refund

In some cases, you will offer partial refunds. When giving a partial refund, you may need to simply refund a portion of a payment then adjust the charge price to reflect the change or, if applying a fee such as a cancellation or clean-up fee, you may choose to create a new charge then transfer the funds being kept to the new charge. Steps for each option are outlined below.

Option 1: Update the original charge directly. 

To do this:

1. On the payment you wish to refund, click
2. Click  Refund
3. On the refund popup, select Refund partial amount
4. Enter the refund amount, after calculating how much of the payment you need to keep.
5. Click Save.

Once the refund is processed, you need to balance the charge. Click the 3 dots (...) next to the charge and click Edit.

Update the charge's Price to reflect the amount kept and it Save. The charge will show as Paid.

Option 2: Create a new charge, then transfer the amount being kept to the new charge.

To do this:

A. Create a new charge.

B. Transfer part of the original payment to the new charge

C. Process a refund for the rest of the original payment.

D. Zero out the charge.

A. Create a New Charge

On the reservation's Charges tab, click the blue "New Charge" button and fill out the following information: When the new charge is saved, you will see it appear on the Charges tab as pictured below.

 

B. Transfer funds to the new charge

1.  Using next to the original payment, click Transfer to another charge. 
2. When the transfer popup opens, select the new charge you just made.
3. Select Transfer part of payment.
4. Enter the amount you are keeping. 
5. Click Transfer.

Once you hit Transfer, your payments and charges will update to reflect the funds move.

The new charge will show as paid and the original charge will show a balance is due since the amount transferred was taken out.

C. Process the remaining refund

Back on the original charge, you will process a full refund for the amount remaining. Not only does this keep your accounting clean but it also allows you to send a new invoice to the guest showing the amount that was kept as a fee.

An Example payments screen after all steps have been completed

D. Zero out the charge

After you process a refund, you you must zero out the charge to remove the balance due.

Click the 3 dots on the charge, then click Zero out charge.
You will see the charge update to show $0.00 and paid.

Correctly Balanced Charge

 

Credit/Debit Card Refunds

Refunds to credit/debit cards can only be made to the card used to pay.

Here are a few special circumstances to consider with credit/debit card refunds:

A. Accidental refunds to an alternative refund method.

If a card payment is refunded to an alternative refund method, something besides the card used to pay like cash or reservation credit, you may lose the ability to refund that payment back to the card used to pay. Even if the alternative refund is deleted, you may not be able to refund back to the card. For example, Firefly may not be able to process a refund to the card used to pay if you accidentally refund a card payment to reservation credit, quickly delete the reservation credit refund, then try to complete a refund back to the card used to pay. In these cases, if you can not successfully process a refund to the card used to pay, your options to complete the refund within Firefly are cash, check, or reservation credit.

B. Blind Refunds

A refund to a "new" card not used for the payment is called a blind refund. Blind refunds are extremely high risk for fraud and PCI compliance does not allow blind refunds. We hold to PCI compliance standards firmly to best protect our parks and their guests so Firefly does not allow blind refunds.

Refunds and Reservation Credit

Reservation credit may be chosen as the refund method for any payment. However, a payment made with reservation credit may only be refunded to reservation credit. 

For more information and all options with reservation credit, see Reservation Credit.