The three available refund options are: Void, Refund, and Manual Refund.
In Summary:
- Void the payment when the transaction took place on the same day of the refund request.
- Refund the payment when you want to return funds from your account to the customer's account.
- Issue a Manual Refund when you've already refunded the customer outside of Keap and simply need to balance the customer's account.
Void
You generally void a transaction when a customer cancels an order right away, makes duplicate purchases in error, or asks to change their method of payment. You can only void pending transactions. A pending transaction is one that has not yet been settled by your merchant account (which usually happens the same business day as the original charge). You can verify the payment's status by logging into your merchant account and searching for unsettled transactions. An unsettled transaction is a charge that the customer can currently view on their account transactions as a pending charge, but it will be removed (normally by the next business day) when you void the payment.
Refund
You can issue a refund when the payment has settled and is no longer a pending charge on the customer's account transactions. Because the payment settled, the funds will be deposited into your account and the subsequent refund you issue to the customer will be debited from your account. Whereas no funds are actually exchanged in the void option, the refund option will return the funds to the customer after they were previously charged. Both the charge and the refund will appear on the customer's account transaction history.
Manual Refund
The purpose of this option is to simply balance the customers account without actually processing a refund. You may need to issue a manual refund when you've already processed the refund through your merchant account or when you refund a cash, check, or credit card payment that was not processed through the merchant account.