Refund reservation payments

This tutorial will walk you through the process on how to post a refund to a guest's folio as a note for accounting purposes (without using Payment Gateway processing)

Important considerations

  • The steps below do not process any refund to the guest's credit card, as the transaction did not go through the payment processor. In this case, you are recording the transaction on Cloudbeds PMS to ensure that the guest folio is accurate. It is useful for accounting purposes, to keep guests' balances and reports accurate.
  • To refund a transaction/payment made through a connected payment gateway, follow the steps in the article here.
  • When processing a credit card refund payment using the Capture/Note Existing Refund as the refund type, it will show in the guest folio the credit card type, last 4 digits of the credit card and a note stating Refund Recorded along with the refund amount in the credit column.

It is not possible to delete a refund record from the folio, so be careful adding it and always check an amount of refund entered.

Step 1 - Access the Reservation Folio
  1. Look for the corresponding reservation. You can use the search bar in the Top menu of your Cloudbeds account
  2. Click on the Folio tab
  3. Open the folio to add the payment record
  4. Click Add/Refund Payment
  5. Click on Refund Payment

Learn more about the Reservation Folio.

Step 2 - Add refund details
  1. Payment Type: it may be a credit card, cash, bank transfer and all the custom payments added to the Payment Options page.
  2. Assign to: if the refund is made to group booking with several guests, you would need to select to which guest the refund will be applied to, which helps to track balances of the guests in reports.
  3. Select Folio to add refund to
  4. Refund Type: if Payment Processing is not enabled, Capture/Note Existing Refund will be selected by default.
  5. Refund Amount: enter the refund amount
  6. Date: enter the refund date (maybe in future or past)
    • Post with current date and time: When this box is checked the current date and time will be posted for the transaction when you click Continue button. Uncheck if adding a transaction for sometime in the past.
  • The date of processed payment can only be the current date and can't be set to the past or future even if Post with current date and time option is off.
  • This functionality does not work with cash payments.
  1. Add a note (optional). We always suggest including a note with every payment refund for tracking purposes.
  2. Refund Payment: if you have this functionality enabled, you can allocate the refund to specific revenue item. Learn more about Payment Allocation
  3. Click Add Refund to add refund record to the system or Cancel to deny the action.
Step 3 - Review refund

The refund will now show up in the folio as a red number under the Credit section/column:

Frequently asked questions

I have no Payment Processing enabled in Cloudbeds PMS. How can I send refund to the guest's credit card?

You would need to use external payment system (POS, terminal, online-banking, gateway not connected to Cloudbeds PMS etc.) to process the refund to a credit card and after the refund is processed you may add a record of a refund made to guest's folio.

To use Cloudbeds PMS to process payments and refunds, check if we support gateway in your country and reach out to our Support Team. We'll be glad to assist you with further steps.

I have added refund by mistake. Can I delete/void it from Folio?

No, it's not possible to delete refund record. If you have added refund by mistake, you may correct the guest's balance by adding the payment to the reservation.

How can I limit access for my staff to add refunds?

You may edit the permissions for your staff role: disable the permission called Add Refund for the needed role. To learn more about permissions please refer to the article here.

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