How Return VS Refund Categorized

[Joannie]

I cannot balance my December sales and transfers. I've got $12,920 in "returns" and $3,170 in "refunds".  We are not a retail shop, we just use square for conference registration every other year. 

So transfers to my bank totaled $37,591.73 and my Quickbooks balance in Square after December  is $28,912.45. 

To complicate the matters further, as we have people cancel their refund/return is made and if we don't have any funds in the Square account it dings our checking account for the balance or the remainder of the balance. This is impossible to decipher. 

So what constitutes a refund vs a return? And why am I being dinged multiple tiimes? 

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Hey there @Joannie.  First, since you are not a retail shop of any kind, returns and refunds should be the same thing.  The difference in terminology is probably due to where the refund/return was processed, and how.  My guess is that specific items (of any kind) result in the transaction being marked returned, whereas a general refund of a dollar amount (without selecting items) would be classified as a refund.  But that is just my guess, since I can’t see any reports on your account.

Second, Square’s policy is to always try to do refunds/returns from our Square balances, whenever possible.  Otherwise, our agreement with them is that they will deduct the remaining amount from our checking accounts.

Third, being dinged multiple times?  Unless you have a specific example or two of multiple refunds/returns for a transaction, I doubt that has happened.  It sounds like you are guessing that it has, but in order to follow up on that, somewhere to start to prove that would be very, very helpful.  

It sounds like something else is going on here.  Maybe discounts?  One thing that I know trips up folks is that while Square refunds our customers 100%, they do not refund us for the card transaction fees.  So, we will always be out those for refunds/returns.  Could this be your issue in balancing?  If not, it would help to see some reports with notes.  It’s impossible to know where to go from there, without doing lots of needless guessing.