How to issue a refund

 @since 1.4 

The payment framework of Vik Booking partially supports automated operations of type "refund”.  

At the moment, for the majority of the payment methods available for purchase on our website, refunds should be issued manually from your bank/gateway account.
However, you can keep track and update the refunded amount directly from the Detail Page of the Reservation.

Although some payment gateways would support automatic transactions to be refunded via APIs. This is the case of our gateway integration for Stripe payment method, which you find available as an add-on gateway on our website here.

When a refund has been issued, the status of the reservation will update into:

• Confirmed/Refunded (in case you must return just a part of the amount paid by the customer. For example if you must return a reimbursable damage deposit, with no need to cancel the entire order that is still valid.)

• Cancelled/Refunded (in case the reservation has been cancelled and the customer has the right to get a refund)
  
  
  

We will show three case studies of refunds that can be done with Vik Booking, with or without the Stripe gateway:

1. Automated refund operation with Stripe made by the customer;
2. Automated refund operation with Stripe made by the admin;
3. Non-automated refund operation with any other payment gateway.

Let’s assume we do have two Types of Prices. One is “Refundable” but only up to 7 days before the check-in, and the other is "Not Refundable". We will of course consider the refund only for those customers who have chosen the stay with a Refundable rate.

Case 1

Customer Sara Mitchel, on day 11/03/2021, books a Room for 1 night from 31/03/2021 to 01/04/2021. She paid online through the Stripe payment gateway.

The next day she has to cancel her stay. Since the Rate Plan allows refunds up to 7 days before the check-in date, she is able to cancel her booking from the front-end page of the Order Detail on the Property website.

After submitting the “Cancel” button, the reservation will be automatically refunded through the bank. The reservation will show the status of Cancelled/Refunded, and inside the reservation detail, you will find the Refund Counter that will notify the number of refunds made and the details.

Case 2

Customer Billie has paid his reservation with Stripe but with a deposit option which will be half-refunded if he does not cancel the reservation till his check-in day.

So this is the situation: he has paid 80 EUR of deposit on a total reservation of 220 EUR

The customer did not cancel his stay and so, at check-in time, he has the right to be returned the half-amount of the deposit.
To issue a manual refund of a confirmed reservation, which will be paid automatically through the bank gateway, of course, the property admin must click on the Refund button at the top of the Reservation Detail page.

Then set the value to return and the reason.

Then click on the Refund button to automatically send the refunded amount. A successful message should appear at the end of the operation.
The new total of Billie’s reservation is now automatically updated:

Case 3

Damian has booked a room but it did not pay with Stripe but with another payment method that does not support automated refund operations. And he already paid a remboursable damage deposit, for example.

However, in case a reservation of this kind is cancelled for any reason or must be partially or totally refunded, it’s always possible to refund the customer manually and then update the amount of the reservation.
The “Amount Paid” parameter in the reservation detail is editable from that page to quickly modify the Amount already Paid. Any change of this value will also change the Remaining Balance of course.
But to issue a refund of the amount already paid the admin must click on the “Edit Reservation” button. Then, at the end of the page, you will find two parameters to modify: the total paid and the refund.

This should be the current situation of Damian’s reservation:

Let’s say we must return the 16 EUR of the deposit, then we must change these values like this:

We must take note that the deposit has been fully refunded so the Total Paid (that was only the deposit amount as the customer has not paid the remaining balance yet) is back to 0. 
So, now, the new total of the reservation is 40(total with deposit)  - 16 (returned deposit) = 24 EUR Total Reservation.

After the customer paid the remaining balance, the reservation situation is this:

Returned amount of 16 EUR. Total to pay/paid 24 EUR.