How do you refund an order in Shopify?

How do you issue a full refund from the Shopify admin?

You can refund a whole order or only part of it from the Orders page, and send the money to the original payment method, to store credit, or to both. You need to be the store owner or hold the Orders permission for the method you refund to.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Order details

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1. From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
2. Click the order you want to refund.
3. Click Refund.
4. Enter the quantity of each item you want to refund; Restock item appears already ticked for products whose inventory you track — see what the two boxes do. If the order includes duties and import taxes, also choose whether to refund Duties and import taxes on refunded items and Additional fees: Customs clearance.
5. In Summary, leave the notification box ticked or untick it, then pick the Refund method, which showed Original payment by default on the screen we checked. If needed, edit the Refund amount, for example to deduct a restocking fee.
6. Click Refund to issue it.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Order details
3. Refund

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How long the money then takes to reach your customer is a separate question, answered in how long a Shopify refund takes.

How do partial and shipping refunds work?

Refund fewer items, or a lower amount, and you issue a partial refund: the order's status changes to Partially refunded, and you can keep issuing partial refunds until you reach the order's original amount. Items left at a quantity of 0 aren't refunded.

Four conditions shape what a partial refund can do:

• Shipping — in the Refund shipping section, tick the shipping line and enter an amount. You can't refund more than the shipping still available to refund, and you can't refund shipping at all on an order with an order-level free shipping discount.
• A discount on the refund page applies to the item's full quantity, whatever quantity you refund, and it is saved on the order when you click Save, whether or not you complete the refund.
• Gift card plus another method — a partial refund goes to the gift card first. On an order with several transactions, the screen shows a suggested split, which you can change.
• Chargebacks — a partial refund doesn't stop the customer from opening a chargeback for the order's full value.

What do the restock and notification boxes do?

A refund can also put the items back in stock and email the customer. On the Refund screen those are two check boxes, plus a separate note field:

• Restock item (Restock items in Shopify's help) is ticked by default and appears only for products whose inventory you track. Untick it if you restock by hand. If an order has no payment to refund, you can restock its items without a refund or a return.
• Send notification once refund is finalized (Send a notification to the customer in the help) is ticked by default; untick it if this refund shouldn't email the customer. What the email says and how to change it is covered in does Shopify email the customer when you refund an order.
• Reason for refund isn't shown to your customer: it is a note for you and your staff, not a return reason.

Should you refund, cancel the order or create a return?

Decide by what happens to the items. If they're coming back, start with a return. If they haven't shipped, refund them, or cancel the whole order and choose the refund in the cancel dialog.

If the customer is sending items back, create the return first. You can refund without a return, but that refund records no return reason, and you can't create a return for items you've already refunded — a return needs fulfilled items that haven't been refunded.

Refunding an item that hasn't been fulfilled removes it from the order, and it can't be fulfilled afterwards.

Cancelling a paid order with no items fulfilled gives you three refund choices in the cancel dialog:

• the original payment method, selected by default;
• store credit;
• later — no refund is issued when you cancel, and a partial refund you issue afterwards turns the payment status to Partially refunded.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Order details
3. More actions
4. Cancel order

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Watch bulk cancels: when you cancel orders in bulk, the Refund payment prompt might not be displayed, and then every cancelled order is refunded immediately — including orders already refunded — so cancel individually when you need the Later option or an order has already been refunded. How cancelling and refunding leave an order in different end states is laid out in our guide to Shopify returns and cancellations.

When you refund or cancel an order processed through Shopify Payments, you don't get its credit card fees refunded; the transaction-fee side of a cancelled order is covered in does Shopify refund transaction fees on a cancelled order.

Can you undo a refund in Shopify?

No. Once you initiate a refund from your Shopify admin, you can't cancel or reverse it, and Shopify's Payments refund page says the same.

If you refunded by mistake, create a new draft order and collect the payment again with it; the ways to get a draft order paid are in our Shopify draft orders guide.

Store credit adds one trap. If the mistake was the method — you refunded to store credit when you meant the original payment method — that method is now locked on the refund screen, which limits what you can still refund there.

To send money to the original payment method anyway, you over-refund the order: that works on orders processed through Shopify Payments and needs the Over-refund orders previously refunded to store credit permission. It doesn't reverse the store credit already issued, so the order can end up over-refunded. If you don't want the customer to keep both, decrease the customer's store credit balance by the amount you refund to the original payment method; a staff member needs the Store credit and Edit store credit permissions for that.