Refunds are done in two places: in the payment provider and in eCom.

Refunding your customer

Your customer is reimbursed when you issue a refund through the online portal of a payment provider. 

1. Login to your Lightspeed eCom Back Office and select Orders.
2. Select the order number link, for example: ORD00123.
3. Identify the payment provider, click add a credit invoice and complete the form. Note the payment provider and total of the completed credit invoice.
4. Open the website of the payment provider. If PayPal for example, open www.PayPal.com. 
5. Login to the payment provider using your merchant credentials.
6. Locate the transaction using the value of the order, the name of the customer and the date of the transaction.
7. Refund the transaction.

Adding a credit invoice

Creating a credit invoice is how you update Lightspeed about the refund, in order to keep your inventory and transaction history current. Make sure to refund your customer through the payment provider to reimburse them.

1. Login to your Lightspeed eCom Back Office and select Orders.
2. Select the order number link, for example: ORD00123
3. In the Payment section, click Add a credit invoice.
4. In the Quantity column, add the number of items you're refunding. To refund only a portion of the value of a product instead of the full value, see Partial refunds.
5. Optionally, refund shipping or payment costs by enabling the appropriate switch.
6. Toggle on Update stock to have your Lightspeed Retail account's inventory level automatically increased. Or toggle off Update stock to not affect your inventory.
7. Click Add.

Partial refunds

To issue a partial refund, refer to the instructions in our Partially refunding a line on an order guide.

Refunding a gift card payment

If your customer used a gift card to pay for an online order, cancel the order to refund the gift card balance.

1. In your back office, go to Orders.
2. Select the order in question.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the order and click Cancel Order.

Confirming your inventory was updated correctly

Creating a refund will affect your Retail inventory. You can confirm the inventory is updated correctly in the Inventory Logs of your Retail account.

1. Login to your Retail account and click Inventory > Item search
2. Locate and select the item that was refunded.
3. On the side bar, click History.
4. In the Inventory Logs section, locate the line(s) that corrected the inventory.
   • If Update stock was toggled on when creating the credit invoice, you will see a line increasing the stock level with the reason: Returned to stock by refunding.
   • If Update stock was toggled off when creating the credit invoice, you will see a line increasing the stock level with the reason: Returned to stock by refunding, and then a line decreasing the stock level with the reason API Removed.

Return vs. refund

• The return feature in eCom tracks your customer's reason for returning an item as well as your store's response. For more information, see Creating return reasons and actions.
• The refund creates a credit invoice and adds a credit to your Retail POS.