How to do a partial refund for a deposit?

[jhbwy]

Hello - 

We take deposits for our service. Sometimes a client requests a large service initially and makes the deposit but then either they alter their plans or we are unable to fill the complete service and the overall total in the end is less than the deposit paid. How do I refund a part of a deposit and then complete the invoice? I can't seem to find a way to do a partial refund for an incomplete invoice.

[Stacelyn24]

You can do it — just refund part of the deposit payment first, then adjust the invoice to the new total and close it. Square won’t let you edit an invoice to “keep” money — you refund the difference from the payment, then finish the invoice as needed.

[Laurie_]

Hi @jhbwy , good question!

To add to what @Stacelyn24 shared: if the deposit on an invoice has already been paid and you now need to adjust the invoice total to be less than the deposit already collected, the cleanest approach is to issue a partial refund for the deposit first. You can do this by navigating to your Transactions page and processing the refund there (when selecting the Issue Refund option, Refund Amount to enter a custom amount).

Once the partial refund is complete, you’ll need to cancel the original invoice and then create a new invoice for your records with the updated total (which has already been covered by the remaining previous deposit). To do this, navigate to the invoice in your Dashboard, select More > Cancel Invoice. When creating the new invoice, you can mark it as paid immediately and select “Other” as the tender type. This ensures the customer isn’t charged again, while still maintaining a clear invoice record.

You can also add a note to the new invoice explaining that payment was made via the previous (now cancelled) invoice, including the original invoice number for reference.

Lastly, cancelled invoices will still remain visible in your Invoices page for record-keeping.

If you need further assistance with any of these steps, just let us know!