How can I apply a partial refund on a single-item order?

[ChrisK2]

Hi, I have a customer that placed a single-item order but he neglected to apply a discount code at checkout that we made available to him. He is now asking that we apply the discount code retroactively. So is there a way to apply a partial refund to a single-item order (or retroactively apply a discount code)? Our payment gateway is Authorize.net. Thanks.

Chris

[ThePrecisionist]

Hi there, @ChrisK2 

I hope you are doing well today! Thanks for bringing your question to our Community forum. I completely understand the importance of being able to offer a partial refund on a single item order. I am more than happy to provide you with some suggestions. 

To gather a little bit more context, was the payment processed through Shopify Payments or a Third-party payment provider? If the answer is Shopify payments, you can follow these steps to process a partial refund on the item: 

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.

2. Click the order that you want to refund.

3. In the Order Details section, click Refund.

4. Rather than using the counter to refund the entire product amount, you can use the Refund Amount option here: 

   
5. Optional: Enter a reason for the refund. 

6. Click Refund to issue a refund for the desired amount. 

If you are using a third-party payment processor, please let me know which gateway was used. In the meantime, we have a great help document for reference here: Creating returns and refunds. 

OR 

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.

2. Click the order that you want to refund.

3. In the Order Details section, click Refund.

4. Enter the quantity of the products that you want to refund. Any products with a quantity set to 0 won't be refunded.

   The Refund amount (not the Total available to refund amount) is updated, minus any shipping charges. You can manually edit this amount (for example, to charge your customer a restocking fee). You can also add a refund for any shipping charges.

5. Optional: Enter the shipping amount that you want to refund into the Shipping field.

6. Optional: If the order includes duties and import taxes, then select whether you want to refund Duties and import tax on refunded items and Additional fees: Customs clearance.

7. If you've shipped the items but your customer hasn't returned them yet, then uncheck Restock items. This checkbox is visible only if you're tracking inventory for the items included in the order.

8. Optional: Enter a reason for the refund.

9. Click Refund to issue a refund for the items that you've chosen.

 Looking forward to hearing back from you, so that we can continue to work on this together. 

[ChrisK2]

Hi, as mentioned in my original post we are using Authorize.net and not Shopify Payments. Thanks.

[ChrisK2]

...and I believe Elavon is the gateway we are using for Authorize.net. Please let me know if there is a way to proceed. Thx.

Chris

[ShaneTCC]

@ChrisK2 :  I'll share what I have experienced, as we have this issue OFTEN, because Discount Ninja is glitchy with other apps (and Shopify itself) and a significant % of our customers don't get the automatic discounts we set up to work site-wide. We also use Authorize.net as our Payment Processor.

My experience has been that, following the instructions from @ThePrecisionist in this post does work, BUT you will probably have to wait a couple of days after Payment Capture until the payment has been "Settled" by Authorize.net, which typically happens late afternoon of the day of Payment Capture. However, more often that not, I have to wait for ANOTHER 24 hours before Shopify/Auth.net will actually PROCESS the Refund -- it will refuse until it's ready, and it's not entirely clear when that "ready" will happen. I haven't found any other way around this yet. It throws off our accounting, but we adjusted to that...

[loomlight]

I need to refund the customer a custom amount. I understand you use the "Refund Amount" under Refund Shippping, however the amount I want to refund is greater than the shipping cost, so it does not allow me to refund it. How do I work around this?

[cpasser]

Hello! We had this same issue and we use Authorize.net. It turns out that you have to wait for the transaction to completely clear/process in A.net before you can initiate the refund. At first I got an error. After the payment was cleared through A.net, the partial refund went through with no problem. Hope this helps!