Cancel vs. Refund: Which Should I Use?
Before diving in, here's a quick guide on which approach to take:
Use Cancel (Option 1) when you want to fully reverse the order, return all products to inventory, and refund the customer in full.
Use a Partial Refund (Option 2) when you need to return money for part of the order, but the order itself should stay active.
IMPORTANT: Do not cancel an entire order through the partial refund process, and do not use partial refunds to bring an order all the way to $0. Canceling through the Billing section leaves products on the order and does not return inventory to stock, which creates issues with your accounting reports. Always use the Cancel option for full reversals.
Option 1: Canceling an Entire Order
This should be used when looking to refund the entire order and return stock to your current inventory.
Navigate to the Order Details page
Click Actions in the upper right corner
Select Cancel this Order
A window will appear with several options, which you can select or unselect depending on the situation:
Cancel order in total and restore inventory will mark the shipping status of the order to "Cancelled" and return the products on the order back into your existing inventory.
Refund full amount to customer's payment method will refund the customer for the total amount of the order — products, shipping, and taxes.
Fraudulent Transaction? will flag the order as fraud in Offset and flag the transaction in Stripe. Only check this if you believe the order was placed fraudulently.
Send cancellation email to customer will send the customer a cancellation notification. You can preview and customize what this email says on the Settings > Transactional Emails page.
Cancellation Info provides a dropdown with reasons for canceling the order. You can add more cancellation reasons on the Settings > Configurations page.
IMPORTANT: Cancellation is permanent. You cannot reopen a cancelled order. If you need to re-create it, you'll need to place a new order from scratch.
What Happens to Cancelled Orders in Reports?
A cancelled order's balance will show as $0 and will be excluded from most sales totals. However, if you're seeing a cancelled order still showing a balance in the Unpaid section of the Dashboard, or still appearing in a customer's LTV, contact support@offsetpartners.com for assistance.
Option 2: Partial Refunds
Refunds appear to a customer credit card in 4-5 business days. There are two ways to process a partial refund, depending on the situation.
Method A: Partial Refund via Edit Order
You can use the Edit Order feature to remove some (but not all) products from an order and process a partial refund. Edit Order can also handle refunds or additional charges after changing a shipping method or shipping address.
When you adjust product quantities, change a shipping method, or change a shipping address, the Edit Order feature will automatically calculate the differences in product totals, shipping costs, and sales taxes to process a refund — or a subsequent charge if totals have increased.
See our article on Editing Orders for the full walkthrough of the Edit Order flow.
Method B: Partial Refund via the Billing Section
Use this method when you need to refund a specific dollar amount without changing the products on the order. Common scenarios include:
Refunding a shipping charge — A customer paid for overnight shipping, the package didn't arrive in time for an event, and you want to refund their shipping cost.
Refunding for a damaged or corked bottle — A bottle was broken in transit or was corked, and you want to refund the retail price of that one bottle plus a portion of the associated sales tax and shipping costs, without removing the bottle from the order.
Issuing a courtesy credit — A customer had a poor experience and you want to refund a portion of their order as a goodwill gesture.
To process a partial refund via Billing:
Navigate to the Order Details page
Scroll to the Billing section
Click Issue Refund next to the transaction
A window will appear with cells for Subtotal, Tax, and Shipping — enter the refund amounts in the corresponding cells
Click Issue Refund to process
IMPORTANT: When you refund through the Billing section, the products stay on the order. You're refunding money, not removing items. This is intentional, but it means your accounting reports will show a mismatch between inventory on the order and payments collected. See our article on [Mismatched Inventory to Payment Transactions] for more details.
Refunding Orders with Multiple Transactions
IMPORTANT: Partial refunds to orders with multiple transactions must be applied to the correct transaction.
You can see a list of all transactions in the Billing section of the Order Details page. When issuing a refund, you need to apply it against the transaction where the charge was originally made.
For example: if you have one transaction for the product purchase and a second transaction where a shipping charge was added later, and you now need to refund that shipping charge, you must apply the refund to the second transaction, not the first.
Another example: if an order has both an original order transaction and a wish grant transaction, partial refunds to a particular portion of the order need to be applied against the corresponding transaction.
Refunding to a Closed or Expired Card
Stripe will still process the refund if the card is closed or expired. When a card has been closed or replaced, the refund is sent to the issuing bank, which is responsible for routing the funds to the customer. This usually works, but it can take longer than a typical 5–10 business day refund window.
If the customer reports they haven't received the refund after 10 business days, they should contact their bank directly. The Offset team can also help obtain an ARN (Acquirer Reference Number) from Stripe, which your customer can share with their bank for tracking. See our article on Credit Card Refund Timing and Delays for more details.
Common Questions
A customer claims they were charged twice. How do I check? Navigate to the order's Billing section. All transactions — successful charges, refunds, and failed attempts — are listed with timestamps. If only one successful charge appears, the second charge the customer is seeing is likely a temporary authorization hold that will drop off within a few business days. Contact support if you need us to verify in the Stripe transaction logs.
How long do refunds take to appear? Refunds typically appear on a customer's credit card statement in 4-5 business days. If it has been longer, see our article Credit Card Refund Timing and Delays for next steps, including how to request an ARN reference number.
How do I process a comp or sample order at $0? Create an admin order and use a manual discount on the checkout page to bring the total to $0. Or process the order as Offline / Pay Later and then use Actions > Mark as Paid. Either way, products will be deducted from inventory.
Is there a way to see who issued a refund? Refund actions are logged in the order's Activity Log at the bottom of the Order Details page. If you need more detail on a specific Stripe transaction, contact support.