Refunds¶

Role: Box Office Staff, Administrators

Refunds reverse payment on a ticket order and release all associated seats. This is a terminal operation that cannot be undone.

Navigation: Stagemgr > Orders > Ticket Orders > [Select Order] > Refund Order

Overview¶

A refund cancels a ticket order by reversing the payment and releasing the seats back to available inventory. Once refunded, the order is permanently set to Refunded status and cannot be modified or restored.

When to Use a Refund¶

Patron requests a full refund for their tickets
Performance is canceled and patrons are being refunded
Order was created in error and needs to be reversed
Patron cannot attend and does not wish to exchange or donate

Consider Alternatives

Before processing a refund, consider whether an exchange or refund to donation might better serve both the patron and the organization.

Refund Eligibility¶

The Refund Order button is available when:

Condition	Requirement
Order status	Must be Processed or Fulfilled
Exchanges	Only the newest order of an exchange chain; orders it was exchanged from are Exchanged and show no button

Refunding an Exchanged Order

An order created by an exchange carries the earlier order's payment as exchange credit. Refunding it settles the whole chain of exchanges behind it (e.g. A exchanged for B, B for C -- refund C):

Each order in the chain is listed on the refund page under its own heading, with what happens to each of its payments.
The original card, cash, check or pass payment is refunded on its own tender, on whichever order holds it; a card charged for a pricier exchange is refunded too. A card already partly refunded by Exchange and Refund returns only what is left on it.
Exchange credits and offsets, and Carryover write-offs, are reversed, so every order in the chain nets to zero.
The newest order becomes Refunded and releases its seats; the earlier orders stay Exchanged.
If any card refund fails, nothing is refunded and every order is left as it was.

Refund Process¶

Step 1: Navigate to the Order¶

Find the order using the Order Search
Open the order detail page

Step 2: Initiate the Refund¶

Click Refund Order in the action area
The refund page opens, showing the full order and, under Refunding returns each payment on its own tender, one line for each payment on the order saying what will happen to it

Payment	What the Refund Page Says
Credit card	The card and the amount that will be refunded to it
Cash	The amount to give the patron in cash
Check / External	The refund amount that will be recorded
Membership	The number of tickets released back to the membership
Flex pass	The number of tickets returned to the pass

Step 3: Add Refund Notes (Optional)¶

The refund page includes a Notes field where you can record:

Reason for the refund
Who authorized the refund
Any relevant communication details

Step 4: Confirm the Refund¶

Click the refund button -- Process Refund when money goes back, or Cancel Membership reservation / Release Flex Pass tickets when the order was paid only with a pass
The system performs the following actions automatically:

Action	Description
Payment reversal	Every payment that was collected and still has something to return is refunded on its own tender
Seat release	All reserved seats are released back to available inventory
Status update	Order status changes to Refunded
Box office alert	If the order was Fulfilled, an alert email goes to the box office and supervisor addresses (the patron is not emailed)

Step 5: Verify Completion¶

After the refund processes:

The order detail page shows the Refunded status
Payment records show the reversal
Seats appear as available on the seat map (for reserved seating)
House count is updated to reflect the released seats

Payment Reversal Details¶

The refund method depends on the original payment type:

Original Payment	Refund Method
Credit Card	Refund issued to the original card via Stripe
Cash	Record indicates cash refund to be given at box office
Check	Record indicates check refund to be issued
External	Record indicates refund through original external method
Flex Pass	Uses are restored to the flex pass
Membership	Membership usage is restored

Orders With Several Payments¶

An order can carry more than one payment -- for example after Add to Order, or a membership order with a card-paid extra seat. One refund handles them all: each payment goes back the way it came in, as listed on the refund page.

A card payment that was already partly refunded (for example by Exchange and Refund) returns only what is left on that charge.
If the order holds a payment kind the refund page cannot return (such as a Carryover), the page says Can't refund this order and names the payment kind, and no refund button is shown.

Credit Card Refunds

Credit card refunds are processed through Stripe and may take 5-10 business days to appear on the patron's statement. Inform the patron of the expected timeline.

Processing Fees Are Not Reversed

When a credit card order is refunded, Stripe does not return the processing fee that was charged on the original transaction. The processing fee remains as a cost to the organization and will continue to appear on financial reports. This is standard credit card processor behavior.

Refunds Made in Stripe¶

Sometimes a refund has to be issued straight from the Stripe dashboard -- for example when something stops a refund or exchange inside Stagemgr. Stagemgr hears about it from Stripe within moments and records the money, so box office totals stay right:

Each Stripe refund becomes one refund payment on the order, for that refund's amount, dated the day it was made in Stripe (so it lands on that day's Daily Receipts). Its note reads Refunded in Stripe dashboard, followed by the reason picked in Stripe's refund dialog when there is one (for example Refunded in Stripe dashboard: Requested by customer).
A ticket order's refund is recorded against the card it came from, so a later refund in Stagemgr returns only what is left on that card. A membership refund is recorded as a negative subscription payment.
If that order was already exchanged, the refund still sits beside the card on the original order, but the exchange credit on the newest order is reduced by the same amount. The newest order then shows only the credit that still exists, and a further exchange can't carry the refunded money forward. The newest order is the one flagged for review.
Refunds Stagemgr issues itself are never recorded twice, and neither is a refund Stripe reports more than once.
A refund Stripe holds as pending (for example when the Stripe balance can't cover it yet) is recorded once Stripe reports it succeeded.
Only the money changes. Tickets, seats and the order's status stay as they are. Instead the order is flagged for review.

A refund Stagemgr cannot match

If a Stripe refund matches no payment in Stagemgr, nothing is recorded and an error report is sent to the system administrator with the Stripe charge and refund ids.

The Review Queue¶

A flagged order shows a red Review badge beside its status in the orders listing; hover over it to see why (e.g. Stripe refund $20.00 on 10/02). To see every order waiting, choose Needs review in the status filter.

The order page shows a Needs review banner with the reason and the order's balance, for example:

Stripe refund $20.00 on 10/02

Order is $20.00 out of balance (due $90.00, paid $70.00).

For an order made by an exchange, the balance covers the orders it was exchanged from too. Membership orders show the reason only: their monthly payments never match their line items.

Resolving a Review¶

Role: Box Office Staff, Administrators

The same staff who can exchange an order.

Type an optional Note in the banner, then choose one fix. Each one records the note and who resolved the review in the order's change history, and clears the badge.

Fix	What It Does	Offered When
Keep tickets, apply as discount	The patron keeps the tickets. A Stripe refund adjustment line is added for the difference, so the order balances.	The order is underpaid
Mark fully refunded	Refunds the order as described above: seats are released and the order becomes Refunded. The card is not refunded again.	Every card on the order is already refunded in full in Stripe
Remove tickets (exchange)	Opens the exchange page, to exchange the order for fewer tickets	The order can be exchanged
Acknowledge	Records the note and leaves the order as it is	Always

If the order is refunded again in Stripe after a review is resolved, it is flagged again.

Notification Behavior¶

Stagemgr does not email the patron about a refund. Tell the patron yourself, including the credit card timeline above.

When the refunded order was Fulfilled, its tickets have already been printed or handed over, so the system emails an internal alert asking staff to make sure those tickets are destroyed:

Original Status	Alert Sent?
Processed	No
Fulfilled	Yes -- to the Box Office and Supervisor Notifications addresses

The alert is titled "Warning: Fulfilled order number refunded" and names the staff member who processed the refund. It goes out within a few minutes, when the background task runner next checks for pending tasks. The recipients are the server-level addresses described in Email Configuration.

Important Rules¶

Terminal operation -- Refunded orders cannot be un-refunded, exchanged, or modified in any way
Full refund only -- The system refunds the entire order amount. Partial refunds are not supported through this workflow.
Inventory impact -- All seats and ticket allocations are released immediately
Audit trail -- The refund is recorded in the order history with timestamp and any notes entered
Report impact -- Refunded orders appear in financial reports as negative adjustments

Cannot Be Reversed

Once a refund is processed, there is no undo. If tickets need to be re-issued to the same patron, a brand new order must be created.

Partial Refund Scenarios¶

Since the system only supports full-order refunds, partial refund scenarios require a workaround:

Split first -- Use Split Orders to divide a multi-ticket order into two orders
Refund one -- Refund the order containing the tickets to be returned
Keep the other -- The remaining order stays in Processed/Fulfilled status

This approach preserves the tickets the patron wants to keep while refunding only the unwanted portion.

Troubleshooting¶

Issue	Resolution
Refund button not available	Verify the order is in Processed or Fulfilled status. An Exchanged order is refunded from the newest order of its exchange chain.
Can't refund this order on the refund page	The page lists why: the order is not Processed or Fulfilled, holds a payment kind the refund cannot return (ask an administrator), was exchanged for a later order (refund that one), or is part-way through an exchange (finish or abandon the exchange first)
Credit card refund failed	Check Stripe dashboard for the transaction; the card may have expired or the account closed
Refunded in the Stripe dashboard instead	The refund is recorded on the order automatically and the order is flagged; see Refunds Made in Stripe
Box office did not receive the refunded-order alert	Alerts are sent only for orders that were Fulfilled when refunded; check the order's history for the prior status and the configured box office and supervisor addresses
Need to reverse a refund	Not possible through the system; create a new order for the patron
Seats not released after refund	Verify the refund completed successfully; check for any system errors in the order history