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Refunds and payment adjustments

Money goes back to a guest only as a refund of a payment they made, with a manager's approval. It reduces the folio's payments and is paid out once.

  • Hospitality Cashiering
  • 4 min read
  • Updated October 20, 2026

For Cashier Manager Accountant

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Where refunds come from

  • A guest asks for money back, or paid twice.
  • A cancellation or no-show left more deposit than the fee: a refund due is created for you.
  • A payment was taken in error (wrong folio, wrong amount): void it.
  • The bank reverses a card payment: a chargeback.

Refunds are made against the payment the guest made, never as loose cash.

Refund a payment

  1. Open Refund or adjust a payment
    Who
    Cashier
    Where
    Payments › Refunds and adjustments, or from the payment
  2. Choose What happened
    What changes
    Refund paid out by the cashier (cash from your drawer), Refund through the card or bank, Void: taken in error, Chargeback from the bank, Manual settlement match, Fee correction.
  3. Enter the Amount and the Reason
    What changes
    At most what is left of the payment after earlier refunds.
  4. Choose the status
    What changes
    Paid out now: a manager approves with their PIN now. Needs approval: recorded as pending; a manager approves it later from Refunds and adjustments.
  5. Record refund
    Approval
    Refunds always need a manager's PIN in a new hotel.
    What changes
    The refund reduces the folio's payments; cash refunds come out of your drawer.

Pending refunds

Payments › Refunds and adjustments lists every adjustment with its status (Waiting for approval, Approved, Posted, Rejected). A manager opens a pending refund and approves it (Approve) or rejects it with a reason (Reject). A refund already paid out cannot be changed: record a new adjustment.

A guest leaving in credit

A folio in credit cannot be checked out until the guest is refunded: refund the payment first, then check out.

Common questions

Can the cashier refund without a manager?

Not in a new hotel: there, refunds always need a manager's PIN, and so does every action the hotel has no rule for. The hotel can change who acts alone in Approval rules and the small-team defaults.

A payment was taken on the wrong folio. Do I refund it?

Not necessarily. Move it to the right folio with Move payment (Move payments and charges between folios); void it only if it should not have been taken at all.

The refund says the voucher is not valid.

You filled in Cash / bank voucher with a voucher that is not an unused payment voucher of this amount. Leave it blank: the payment voucher is made for you.

Related guides

Take a payment or a deposit Payments are taken at the desk in cash, by card terminal or by bank transfer, inside your shift. Each one becomes a receipt in… Open and close a cashier shift Every cashier takes money inside their own open shift. At the end they count the drawer without seeing what is expected; the… Cancellations and no-shows Cancelling a booking or marking a no-show charges the fee the booking's policy sets. The deposit pays the fee; the rest becomes a… Credit notes and reopening an invoice An issued invoice is corrected only by a credit note built from it, then a new invoice. The folio reopens in between. Reconciliation, manual match and the card terminal Desk payments make their own receipt and are reconciled at once. The Reconciliation tab handles the rest, one payment to its own…

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