Refunds

Refunds in Funny Little Shows are a two-step process. One person requests the refund against a booking; another approves or rejects it. Only on approval does anything reach Stripe and money move.

That split is deliberate. Whoever is on the phone to an unhappy customer can raise the refund immediately, without also holding the power to send money out of your account — the two are separate permissions, so you decide who does which.

Before you start: your refund policy

Refunds are set per session, and customers see the terms before they buy.

Open the session, go to its Pricing tab, and next to Refunds Enabled click Edit Refund Policy:

• Refunds Enabled — the switch that says whether you offer refunds on this session at all.
• Refund Policy — either plain text describing your terms, or a link to a policy page elsewhere (it must start with https://).

Your buy page shows this to customers. With refunds switched off it tells them plainly that no refunds apply to this session.

Note

The policy is what you’ve promised, not a control on the refund screens. Turning refunds off doesn’t stop a staff member raising one — it sets the customer’s expectation, and it’s up to you whether to make an exception.

Step 1 — Requesting a refund

Refunds are always raised against a booking. Go to Ticketing → Bookings, find the booking, and either:

• use the Refund action on the booking’s row; or
• open the booking and click Request Refund.

Either takes you to the Create Refund page, which shows the booking’s reference, customer, ticket count and the amounts you’re working with.

Note

Once a booking already has a refund pending, or has been refunded, the Request Refund button no longer appears when you open it.

What you can refund

The page shows two money figures side by side, and the difference matters:

Field	What it is
Total Paid	Everything the customer paid, booking fee included
Total Ticket Amount	The refundable amount — ticket value less any discount applied
Booking Fee	Charged at checkout and shown separately

A refund is capped at the Total Ticket Amount. The booking fee sits outside it and isn’t part of what you refund here.

Full or partial

Full Refund returns the whole refundable ticket amount and covers every ticket on the booking. There’s nothing else to choose.

Partial Refund opens up two controls, and you can use either or both:

• an amount, which you set yourself, up to the maximum shown; and
• a ticket selection, where you tick the individual tickets being refunded. Each ticket shows its reference, category, current status and price.

Ticking tickets is what makes a refund about those seats rather than just about money. Refunded tickets change status and come back off the sold count — so if you’re giving three of a party of six their money back, tick those three.

Tip

A partial amount with no tickets ticked is a pure goodwill refund: money goes back, but every ticket stays valid and the customer keeps their seats. That’s the right shape for “the sound was terrible, have $20 back” — and the wrong shape for someone who isn’t coming.

A Reason for Refund is required. It’s stored with the refund, shown to whoever approves it, and recorded on the booking’s timeline — so write it for the person deciding, not for yourself: why, and who asked.

Click Submit Refund Request to raise it.

What happens straight away

Submitting the request doesn’t move any money. It:

• creates the refund at status Requested;
• sets the booking to Refund Pending;
• sets each ticket being refunded to Refund Pending; and
• records the request, with your name and reason, on the booking’s timeline.

Tickets marked Refund Pending are held, not released: they can’t be resold while the request is waiting on a decision, and your availability doesn’t change. The pending count is an indicator that a decision is outstanding — the seats only move once the refund is approved and completes.

Step 2 — Approving or rejecting

Go to Ticketing → Refunds for Manage Refunds — every refund request, with the booking reference, customer, amount, type, status, who requested it and when.

Use View on any row to see the full detail, including a timeline of the request and, once processed, the Stripe reference.

Approve

Approve is available on refunds still at Requested, to anyone with the approve permission. Approving sends the refund to Stripe for action immediately — there’s no separate send step, and no undo.

The status then moves through:

Status	Meaning
Requested	Raised, waiting for a decision
Approved	Approved here, going to Stripe
Sent to Stripe	Accepted by Stripe, awaiting confirmation
Completed	Stripe confirmed the money went back
Failed	Stripe couldn’t process it

Sent to Stripe and the brief Processing state are just the refund in flight. Stripe confirms separately, so a refund normally reaches Completed shortly after you approve rather than the instant you click — refresh the list if you’re watching for it.

What happens when it completes

Once Stripe confirms:

• the refund is marked Completed;
• the booking becomes Refunded;
• every refunded ticket becomes Refunded, comes off the sold count, and its seat is returned to sale where the ticket category allows it; and
• the customer’s ticket PDF is deleted, so the QR code can’t be presented at the door.

The money goes back to the card the customer paid with. Card refunds usually take a few days to appear on their statement — that’s their bank’s timing, not something that’s still pending at your end.

Caution

Deleting the ticket PDF is what actually stops a refunded ticket being used, and it applies to the whole booking’s ticket document. On a partial refund, tell the customer their remaining tickets are still valid and check them in from the booking rather than from the old PDF.

Reject

Reject is available on refunds at Requested or Approved — so a refund approved by mistake can still be stopped, provided Stripe hasn’t taken it yet.

Rejecting closes the request off in Funny Little Shows and releases the pending count against the session. No email is sent to the customer — if they asked for the refund, telling them it was declined is a conversation for you to have.

Caution

Rejecting doesn’t tidy up the statuses the request set. The booking stays at Refund Pending and the tickets stay at Refund Pending — they aren’t returned to their previous status automatically. If the customer is still coming, check the booking before the door so their tickets read correctly on the night.

Where refunds show up afterwards

Refunded tickets and amounts flow into the session’s Sales Reconciliation report, so what you settle on matches what actually cleared. Every step — requested, approved or rejected, completed — is also written to the booking’s own timeline, giving you a full history of who did what and when.

Permissions

Two separate grants control the workflow:

Permission	What it allows
Create request for refunds	Raise a refund against a booking
Approve refund requests	Approve or reject a refund request

Grant them to the same person and they can refund end to end. Grant them to different roles and you have a genuine second pair of eyes on every payment going out. Viewing the refund list only needs ordinary bookings access.