Refund or cancel a booking (cancelling does not refund)

Cancelling a booking does not refund the customer. Rentalbuddy never sends money back just because a booking is cancelled. If the customer should get their money back, refund it from the booking's Payment section — before or after you cancel, the order does not matter.

The two actions are completely separate:

Cancel stops the booking: it is marked Canceled, the equipment is released and the customer's unlock page stops working. No money moves.
Refund sends money back to the customer's card through Stripe. It does not cancel the booking and does not release the equipment.

If a customer is not coming and should have their money back, you do both.

Refund a card payment from the booking

Refunds are made in the Rentalbuddy admin, on the booking itself. You do not have to open Stripe (older advice that "refunds can only be done in Stripe" is out of date).

Open Bookings in the menu and open the booking.
Scroll to the Payment section. Each payment is one line with Amount, Payment method, Status, Payment ID, Created and Registered by.
Find the line where Payment method is Stripe and the status is Paid. At the start of that line there is a round arrow button labelled Refund.
Press it. The Refund box opens with an amount already filled in. Check the figure — it is a suggestion, not necessarily what you want to send back.
Change the amount if you only want to refund part of it.
Press the button at the bottom. It reads Repay followed by the amount, so you see exactly what you are about to send back.

When it has gone through, the box closes and the booking reloads with the refund on it.

If the box stays open and nothing changes after you press Repay, the refund did not go through and no money was sent. Rentalbuddy does not show Stripe's reason in that case. Check the payment in your Stripe Dashboard (search for the Payment ID), and contact support if it keeps failing.

Which payments have a Refund button

The Refund button appears only on payments that were paid online through Stripe: payments the customer made at checkout and payments made through a payment link you sent from the booking. It disappears once the whole payment has been refunded.

Payments you registered by hand have no Refund button. Rentalbuddy never held that money, so there is nothing for it to send back: hand back cash, or refund Swish, an invoice or your own card terminal the way you normally would. What you can do in Rentalbuddy is void the manual payment line, see below.

Refund part of the amount (partial refund)

You can refund any amount up to what is still refundable on that payment, and you can do it in several goes — part today, the rest later.

You cannot refund more than the customer paid on that payment:

Under the field the box states the ceiling: "The amount must not exceed" the amount, followed by "(payment size)". After an earlier partial refund, that ceiling is what is left on the payment.
If you type a larger number, the field jumps back to the maximum.
The Repay button stays disabled at zero.

So you cannot overshoot by accident. There is no per-product refund: if only one item in a multi-item booking should be refunded, work out that amount yourself and refund it from the payment.

If the booking has several Stripe payments (for example the checkout payment plus a payment link you sent later), each line has its own Refund button and its own ceiling. Refund from the payment the money came in on.

What happens after a refund

On the booking:

A new line appears under the payment with a negative amount and the method Stripe (return).
Paid goes down. The booking's payment status becomes Refunded when everything the customer paid has been refunded, or Partially paid after a partial refund — that is expected, not an error.
The payment's history icon (Show payment history) opens Payment history, which lists the refund as Refunded with who made it and the amount. A checkout card payment gets this icon from its first refund on.

In Stripe: Rentalbuddy asks Stripe to refund straight away, and the refund appears on the payment in your Stripe Dashboard with its own status. Your Stripe balance pays for it. Rentalbuddy doesn't change Stripe's fees: whether Stripe returns its fee on a refunded payment is shown on that payment in your Stripe Dashboard.

For the customer:

The money goes back to the card or payment method they paid with. It travels back through the card network and their bank, which usually takes some days; neither you nor Rentalbuddy can speed that up. If a customer asks where it is, look up the refund in your Stripe Dashboard.
Rentalbuddy does not send a refund email. Stripe may email the customer about the refund if you have turned that on in your Stripe settings. If in doubt, assume the customer has heard nothing and tell them.

A refund cannot be undone. There is no "cancel refund" in Rentalbuddy or in Stripe. If you refund too much, the only way back is to ask the customer to pay again (for example with a payment link, see below). Read the amount twice before pressing Repay.

Who can refund and cancel

Refund needs the refund permission. Account owners and account members have it; Booking staff and account viewers do not.
Partners cannot refund. Partner owners, partner members and partner viewers never see the Refund button on the accounts they manage — refunds stay with each account's own owners and members. A partner who is helping a customer asks the customer to make the refund.
Cancel is available to account owners and members, Booking staff, and to partner owners and partner members on the accounts they manage.
Void payment, Edit payment and New payment need permission to manage bookings: account owners and members, Booking staff, and partner owners and partner members. For Booking staff, a manual payment with a negative amount or the status Refunded is refused, because that records money going back out.

If you do not see a button described here, your role does not include it. See the users and roles guide.

Cancel a booking

What cancelling does

The booking's Status becomes Canceled.
The equipment is released, so the time becomes bookable again.
The customer's unlock page stops working. If they open it they see "Your booking have been cancelled." with your location's contact details.
Reminder emails that were still scheduled for the booking are not sent.

What cancelling does not do

No money moves. Nothing is refunded, not partly and not fully. The payment stays exactly as it was, and the booking keeps showing it as paid.
No email to the customer. Rentalbuddy does not send a cancellation email. Tell the customer yourself.
A PIN code the customer has already received is not withdrawn from the lock by Rentalbuddy. Cancelling stops the unlock page, but a code the customer has already seen there (or that you read out to them) may still open the lock until its time window ends. Codes are never sent by email. If that matters, handle it on the lock (see the guides on locks).

How to cancel

Open the booking under Bookings.
Press Cancel in the row of buttons at the top. You can also cancel from the Bookings list with the bin icon (Cancel booking) on the row.
Confirm in the Cancel booking? box ("Are you sure to cancel this booking?") by pressing Cancel booking.

The confirmation message reads "Booking deleted", but the booking is not deleted: it stays in the list with Status Canceled, and its payments and history are kept.

Cancelling cannot be undone. Once a booking is cancelled the Cancel button disappears and there is no "un-cancel". If it was a mistake, make a new booking for the customer.

Membership purchases cannot be cancelled this way. Everything else you can change on a booking — times, products, locks, extending — is in the guide on editing, moving or cancelling a booking.

Manual payments: Void payment instead of delete

Payments you registered by hand (for example Pay On Site, Manual Swish, Manual Card Payment, Manual Invoice or Test payment) are never deleted. Instead you void them:

On the manual payment line, press the bin icon (Void payment).
The Void payment box explains: "The payment stays in the list as voided and no longer counts toward the paid amount."
Optionally fill in Reason (optional), for example "Registered twice" or "Customer paid cash back".
Press Void payment.

The line stays in the list, greyed out and struck through, with the status Voided, and moves to the bottom. It no longer counts toward Paid, so Left to pay and the payment status update. Its Payment history shows who voided it and why. A voided line cannot be edited or voided again — register a new payment instead with New payment.

Voiding does not move any money. It only corrects the booking's figures. If you are giving cash or Swish back, do that yourself and then void the line (or register it the way your bookkeeping prefers).

Unpaid payment links: if you sent the customer a Stripe payment link from the booking and they have not paid yet, that line has a bin icon too. It opens Remove payment link ("Do you want to remove this payment link? The customer will no longer be able to pay through it."), and Remove takes it away.

A paid Stripe payment has no bin icon. It can only be refunded.

Refund the difference after a cheaper move or change

When you move or change a booking and it becomes cheaper, Rentalbuddy does not refund the difference automatically. When you use Edit → Move, the booking window shows "To refund:" with the amount before you confirm. (An extension only ever adds cost, so Extend always shows "To collect:".) Back on the booking you get the message "The new price is (amount) lower than what has been paid. Refund the difference from the payment list."

Then refund as described above. When you open Refund on a booking that has been paid more than it now costs, the box suggests the overpaid amount. Check it and press Repay. Until you refund, the booking simply shows more Paid than its Total (VAT incl).

When the customer moves their own booking to a cheaper time (if you let customers reschedule), they see "Refund:" with the amount, and the difference is refunded to their card automatically — only for bookings paid online through Stripe. In Payment history that refund is registered by Customer. If a customer paid extra to move and the new time was taken before the payment finished, that extra payment is also refunded automatically.

Cancelled but still paid, or charged but no booking

Money and booking can end up out of step. These are the cases, how to spot them and what to do.

You cancelled, but the customer still paid

This is the most common case: the booking was cancelled and nobody refunded it, because cancelling does not refund.

How to spot it: in the Bookings list, Status is Canceled while Payment Status is still Paid or Partially paid. You can type "Canceled" in the search box to list only cancelled bookings, then sort by Payment Status.
Fix: if the customer should have their money back, open the booking and refund it. The Refund button still works on a cancelled booking.

The customer was charged but the booking was cancelled or expired

When a customer goes to payment, Rentalbuddy holds the equipment for them for about seven minutes (see the guide on failed payments for how the hold works). In rare cases a payment completes at the very moment that hold runs out — typically when the customer took a long time approving the payment in their banking app or with Klarna.

How to spot it: the customer says they paid and have a confirmation or a charge on their card, but the booking shows Status Canceled. On the booking, the Payment section shows a Stripe line with status Paid. In your Stripe Dashboard the payment has succeeded; its description is the Rentalbuddy booking ID, which you can paste into the Bookings search box.
Why it matters: the equipment was released when the hold ran out, so it may already be booked by someone else, and the customer may not get a working unlock page or code.
Fix, one of two ways:
- Refund the payment on that booking and ask the customer to book again, or
- Create a new booking for the customer yourself, and register a Manual payment on it with a Payment note that points to the original payment (for example its Payment ID), so the new booking does not show money owed. The money itself stays on the original booking in Stripe.

If customers are regularly charged without getting a booking, that is not the rare timing case — contact support. It can mean an older Stripe connection that no longer reports payments to Rentalbuddy.

The customer paid twice

If a customer booked twice by mistake (for example because they thought the first attempt failed), you will find two bookings with Paid. Cancel the one they don't need and refund its payment. If customers are regularly sent back to the start of the booking window after paying, check that the booking button script is only on your page once (see the guide on installing the booking button).

Common situations

The customer cancels well in advance and gets everything back. Refund the full amount on the payment line, then cancel the booking so the equipment is released.

The customer cancels late and you keep a fee. Refund only the part you are giving back — type the reduced amount in the Refund box. The booking will show Partially paid. Then cancel the booking.

The customer doesn't turn up and gets nothing back. Cancel the booking only, or leave it as it is. Do not refund.

The customer never got a code and wants their money back. Refund from the booking as usual, then cancel it. To find out why the code was missing, see the guide on customers who got no PIN code.

The booking was paid in cash or on site. There is nothing to refund in the system. Settle it with the customer directly, then void the manual payment line if you want the booking's figures to reflect that.

You cancelled and then realised money should go back. No problem — the Refund button is still on the booking after cancelling.

You refunded too much. A refund cannot be reversed. Ask the customer to pay the difference: on the booking, press New payment, choose Payment link Stripe ("Payment link is sent to the customer's email") and press Register Payment. A difference below Stripe's smallest online payment for your currency (3 SEK, for example) can't be sent as a link: the box says so and Register Payment stays greyed out. Settle such a small amount with the customer directly, or register it as Manual.

It is a test booking you made yourself. A booking made with Make a test booking (it has a Test chip next to its status) needs nothing from you. In Bookings it is hidden unless you switch on Show test bookings. It is cancelled automatically 30 minutes after it was made, and with Test with a real payment the small test charge is refunded straight away, so the booking shows the payment and its refund. Stripe keeps its small fee. Cancel it yourself if you want to end the test sooner.

Common questions

I just cancelled a booking. Is the customer refunded automatically? No. Cancelling never refunds. Open the booking, press Refund on the Stripe payment line and confirm with Repay.

Does cancelling in Rentalbuddy refund or cancel the payment in Stripe? No. The payment stays as it is in both Rentalbuddy and Stripe until you refund it from the booking's Payment section.

Can I refund only part of the amount? Yes. Type the amount in the Refund box. You can refund in several goes, up to what the customer paid on that payment.

Where is the refund button? I can't find it. It is the round arrow labelled Refund at the start of a Stripe line with status Paid in the booking's Payment section. It is not there for manual payments, for payments that are already fully refunded, or if your role cannot refund (partners, Booking staff and viewers cannot).

Is the refund instant, and can I undo it? Stripe sends the refund straight away, but it takes some days to reach the customer's account. It cannot be undone.

How do I delete a manual payment that was registered by mistake? Press the bin icon on the line and choose Void payment. The line stays in the list as Voided and no longer counts toward Paid.

I moved a booking to a cheaper time. Does the customer get the difference back? Not when you move it — refund the difference from the payment list; the refund box suggests the overpaid amount. When the customer moves their own card-paid booking to a cheaper time, the difference is refunded automatically.

The customer paid but the booking says Canceled. What do I do? Either refund the payment and ask them to book again, or create a new booking for them and register a manual payment with a note pointing to the original payment.

There is a small refund in Stripe that nobody here made. Where does it come from? Most likely a test booking made with Make a test booking → Test with a real payment: Rentalbuddy charges Stripe's smallest amount and refunds it at once. The booking has a Test chip and is cancelled automatically.

Can Booking staff refund a booking? No. Booking staff can cancel bookings and register payments, but has no Refund button and cannot register a manual payment with a negative amount or the status Refunded. Ask an account owner or account member to make the refund.