How refunds work on Fourwaves: full and partial refunds, the service fee, reversing a refund, and the effect on a registration.
Full vs. partial refund
Go to Payment > Transactions, select the transaction, and click Refund charge. You'll see the initial amount paid, the amount already refunded, and the remaining refundable amount. Enter any amount up to what's refundable. The refund goes back to the card or PayPal account that the participant paid with.
You can make as many partial refunds as needed for a given transaction, as long as the initial amount paid hasn't been fully refunded.
Note: when Fourwaves collects the payments for your event, refunds are no longer possible after the event's end date.
Refund a specific item
To refund one item and keep the rest of the registration, click Cancel item in the registration. An item is, for example, a workshop, an add-on or a ticket option. See Cancel a paid item.
What about the Fourwaves service fee?
On a full refund, the participant gets back everything they paid, including the Fourwaves service fee and any taxes on it. The service fee is charged back to the organizer. Fourwaves doesn't add extra transaction fees during a refund, and there's no separate workflow to refund only the service fee — it's refunded in proportion to the amount you issue.
Can I undo a refund?
No. Once confirmed, a refund can't be reversed from inside Fourwaves. If it was a mistake, contact the participant and either process a new charge manually or use Forward payment to request payment again.
Does a refund cancel the registration?
No. Refunding a transaction doesn't cancel the participant's registration. To also cancel it, go to Registration > Registrations, open the participant, and click Withdraw. For a single item, Cancel item handles both actions at once.
Refunds on invoice or offline payments
For bank transfer, cheque, or other offline payments, the refund happens outside Fourwaves: these transactions have no Refund charge action. Once sent, update the transaction under Payment > Transactions to keep your records accurate: you can Mark as unpaid or Delete it.