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Recording a refund: giving money back to the patient
Recording a refund: giving money back to the patient

Record a refund and return the funds that were paid back to your patient.

Emily avatar
Written by Emily
Updated over a week ago

If you need to refund a patient and give their money back to them, you'll be able to record this quickly and easily! What you'll do is "reverse" an invoice, which will automatically allow you to record the refund. Read on below for the step-by-step process.

This guide is for recording refunds in Cliniko. If your patient has paid online (meaning the payment was recorded in Stripe), you will still need to manually process the refund in Stripe in order to ensure the patient gets their money back. Recording the refund in Cliniko will not automatically reverse the payment in Stripe Stripe has an overview on how to process a refund on their support site.


Refund a patient

First, find the invoice that you need to refund. Press the Reverse button at the top:

After that, you'll see a new area that says Credit note items, and it. will reverse every item on the invoice by applying a negative quantity, and therefore a negative total:

You can certainly amend what's being listed as negative—if you're only refunding part of the invoice, for example, you can adjust the quantity or the unit price, which will in turn adjust the total amount. At the bottom, you'll see how much was refunded, and what payment method it was refunded to (i.e. credit card, cash, etc.).

Next, press the Create credit & refund button:

This will bring you to a page that looks very similar to the payment page, except you'll see that the top of the page says New refund:

Within that page, you'll also see that there is a negative balance in the refund source section, and a refund summary that shows how much is remaining to refund.

Above the refund summary, you'll also see an "unapplied credit" message. This indicates the amount that would be applied as account credit if you did not record it as a refund.

At the bottom, you'll be able to save the refund:

That will then bring you to a new page that indicates a new credit note, and let you know which invoice it's related to:

At the bottom, you'll see how much was refunded, and what payment method it was refunded to (i.e. credit card, cash, etc.).

And that's a refund, done and dusted! 🧹 If you'd need to reverse a payment and apply it as account credit instead, head over here.


Tracking refunds

You'll be able to easily see what transactions have been recorded as refunds if you look in the invoices and payments section of your account.

To see which invoices have been reversed, there will be a credit note tag next to the invoice number in the invoices section:

Within the payments section, there will be a refund tag to indicate that a refund was recorded for that particular payment:

This will help you to keep track of what has been refunded, and what has been applied as account credit. Refunds will also be recorded in your daily payments and payment summary reports—head over here to learn more.


For more information on all things refunds and account credits, head over here!

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