How refunds work
Every refund is recorded in the Refunds section of the order’s Billing panel. A refund never changes the order total: the original invoice stays as it was, and the refund is a separate entry that offsets it in your books and exports.
There are two kinds of refund:
Through Stripe or PayPal: Common Ground sends the refund to the processor, and the buyer gets their money back as soon as you submit. You don’t need to open your Stripe or PayPal dashboard.
Recorded only: cash, card terminal, bank transfer, cheque, or a refund you already made from a processor’s dashboard. Common Ground records it, but you pay the buyer back yourself.
When an order can be refunded through Stripe or PayPal
The option appears when all of these are true:
The order has a Stripe or PayPal payment with its transaction ID. Payments made on your Eshop record it automatically.
Stripe or PayPal is still connected to your shop.
Something is left to refund on the order.
The amount you can refund is capped at what’s left on the order. Refunds already recorded by any other method count too, so the buyer can never be refunded twice.
Refund part of an order
Use this for an item that turned out to be unavailable, a damaged record, or a shipping adjustment.
Open the order and go to Billing › Refunds › Edit refunds.
Select Stripe or PayPal as the refund method.
Turn on Refund the buyer through Stripe (or PayPal).
Enter the amount. The form shows how much can still be refunded.
For Stripe, choose a Refund reason. For PayPal, you can add a Note to the buyer, which PayPal shows them.
Click Refund via Stripe (or PayPal).
Warning: The refund is sent as soon as you submit and cannot be undone.
Tip: To take an item out of a locked order’s sales figures, mark it as unavailable first (see Editing and managing orders), then refund its amount here.
Refund and cancel an order
Open the order and select Cancel order.
Choose whether to Also restore item stock quantities.
Select Refund via Stripe (or PayPal). This refunds everything left on the order.
Add a refund reason (Stripe) or a note to the buyer (PayPal) if needed.
Click Refund and cancel.
If the buyer was already refunded some other way, select Order was fully refunded instead. If they weren’t refunded at all, select Order was not refunded.
Record a refund made by other means
Go to Billing › Refunds › Edit refunds.
Select the method, the date and the amount.
Click Submit refund.
For a Stripe or PayPal method with the toggle off, the form reminds you that the refund is recorded only: you still need to refund the buyer from your Stripe or PayPal dashboard.
Removing a refund
A recorded refund can be removed from Edit refunds with Remove. A refund made through Stripe or PayPal cannot be removed, because the money has already gone back to the buyer.
If a refund fails
If Stripe or PayPal refuses a refund, for example because your balance is too low or the payment is disputed, you’ll see their message and nothing is recorded. When an order has several payments and one fails partway through, the refunds that did go through are still recorded on the order.
Discogs orders
Discogs payments go through Discogs, so they can’t be refunded from Common Ground. Refund the buyer on Discogs, then record the total in Edit refunds.