Refunding a Lightspeed eCom sale

You can give customers a full or partial refund for their orders made in your Lightspeed eCom online store. When you refund an order, you send an initial payment, including taxes and any shipping costs, back to a customer. There are different workflows for refunding an order depending on its payment type:

• Lightspeed Payments orders can be refunded right from Retail POS.
• PayPal orders can be refunded from your Lightspeed eCom admin.
• For any other third-party payment methods, you start the refund from your Retail POS, but to actually refund money you will need to visit your payment processor's merchant account and initiate a refund from there.

Issuing a refund for online orders paid with Lightspeed Payments

When a customer pays for their online order with Lightspeed Payments, you can issue a refund right from your Retail POS. Once you issue a refund in your POS, money will automatically return to your customer’s bank account.

A part of issuing a refund in Retail POS is creating a return of purchased items. That means, a customer needs to return one or several items that they purchased from your online store first. They can bring items in one of your locations or ship them back to you. The returned items are automatically restocked in your POS catalog, meaning they will be available for sale in both online and offline stores.

To refund an online sale purchased with Lightspeed Payments:

1. From your Retail POS, navigate to Sell → Sales history and find the eCom sale you would like to return.
2. Click on the sale to expand it, then click Return items.
3. (optional) If a customer wants to return only one item from an order with multiple products, remove the items not being returned by clicking the trash icon next to each product.
4. Click Refund.
5. In the Return field, enter the amount you want to refund.
6. Select the Lightspeed Payments payment method for a refund.
7. Click Complete refund.
8. Click Complete sale.

The items will now be back in your inventory.

The order status on the Sales history page will be updated to ‘Returned, completed’.

If you have the Loyalty program enabled, any bonus points earned for returned items will be deducted from the customer's total bonus points.

Issuing a refund for online orders paid with PayPal

When a customer pays for their online order with PayPal, you can issue a refund from your Lightspeed eCom admin. Once you issue a refund in your eCom admin, the paid amount will automatically return to your customer.

To make a full or partial refund for an online order paid with PayPal Checkout:

1. In your Retail POS, go to the Online tab.
2. Scroll down and click Go to eCom series.
3. In your eCom admin, go to My sales → Orders.
4. Select an order you want to refund and click the Update dropdown button near the order, then select Refund order.
5. In the Summary table on the right, enter the amount you want to return to a customer.
6. (optional) If you do not want to send a notification to a customer, untick the Send email with refund details to customer checkbox.
7. (optional) In the Reason for refund, enter why the customer asked for a refund or what products were refunded.
8. Click Refund.

The transfer process between your and your client’s banks may take several business days, depending on the bank. If a customer hasn't received money after 14 business days, they must contact their bank.

Since the refund happens not directly in your Retail POS, items will not be automatically restocked in your inventory. So if a customer returns refunded items to you, you should manually update stock in your Retail POS.

A customer will also keep their Loyalty bonus points for the returned items, so if you want to deduct bonus points, you should manage Loyalty points from your Retail POS.

Issuing a refund for online orders paid with a third-party payment provider

In Lightspeed eCom, you can refund money only for orders paid with Lightspeed Payments or PayPal. For any other payment methods the process of issuing refunds includes two steps:

Issue a refund from Retail POS to log in returned items and update stock. Customers can bring refunded items in one of your locations or ship them back to you. Products returned from Retail POS during the refund process are automatically restocked in your POS catalog.

After you complete a refund in Retail POS, you will need to log into your payment processor's merchant account and issue a refund from there in order to actually refund money.

To refund an online sale made with a third-party payment provider in Lightspeed eCom:

1. From your Retail POS, navigate to Sell → Sales history and find the eCom sale you would like to return.
2. Click on the sale to expand it, then click Return items.
3. (optional) If a customer wants to return only one item from an order with multiple products, remove the items not being returned by clicking the trash icon next to each product.
4. Click Refund.
5. In the Return field, enter the amount you want to refund.
6. Select the Lightspeed Payments payment method for a refund.
7. Click Complete refund.
8. Click Complete sale.
9. Go to your payment processor account and issue a refund from there.

The order status on the Sales history page will be updated to ‘Returned, completed’.

If you have the Loyalty program enabled, any bonus points earned for returned items will be deducted from the customer's total bonus points.