Refunding a Payment in Actionstep Payments

Sometimes a client will make a credit card or ACH payment by mistake. In those instances, you will want to refund the online payment, which will result in you no longer having the money from that original payment and the balance of the client's credit card will be increased by the payment amount.

This article explains how you can use the Actionstep Payments Portal to find the transaction that needs to be refunded and then shows you how to process the refund.

You are only able to refund a full payment—you cannot make partial refunds. A refund will take 1-2 business days to be processed.

Refunding a Payment

All refunds will be withdrawn from your operating account even if the payment was made to your trust account. To make a refund (in relation to a trust payment), follow the instructions as below and then complete some additional steps as outlined in Actionstep Payments - Refunding Payments (Additional steps for trust refunds)

To do this: 

1. In Practice Management, go to Admin - Payment Facility.
2. Go to Refund a payment. In order to refund a payment, you must know the exact transaction ID. To find the transaction ID you have to open the payments portal by clicking on the Payments Portal button shown below.
   
   NOTE:  The transaction ID must be exact. You can't search for the ID using this box or find the transaction ID by entering in a partial transaction ID. 
3. Sign in to Actionstep's Payments Portal. (See Accessing and Navigating Actionstep's Payments Portal for help.)
4. Open the Actionstep Payments admin page (Admin > Actionstep Payments, then click on Open Payments Portal).
5. You will be prompted to enter in your sign-in details to the Payment portal to be able to proceed. Your sign-in credentials to the Payment Portal will be different from your normal Actionstep sign-in credentials.
   Once you have signed in, you will see the Payments Portal dashboard.
6. From the menu on the left of the page, click Payment History.
   
7. Find the transaction in the list. The following options can help you:
   • Filter the list by clicking Sales, Authorizations, or Refunds to see only transactions of that type.
   • Sort the list by clicking the Sort By drop-down list and choosing the value you want to sort by.
   • Use the Search box to find specific transactions.
8. Find and copy the transaction ID. (There are multiple ways to do this. See Finding a Transaction ID in Actionstep Payments for help.)
9. Paste the full transaction ID into the box and press Enter. (The page will show the full details of this transaction. To see more details click See payment items.)
10. Add a Reason for refund.
11. Click Refund Payment.
    

Once you refund a payment, find the corresponding invoice payment in Actionstep and reverse that entry to ensure your Actionstep records are accurate.

You will need to reverse the payment and then decide how to proceed based on the circumstances of the refund (e.g., does the invoice still need to be paid, will it be written off or a credit note added, etc. These transactions should be processed as normal.)

Any user on the matter that the payment was linked to will get an email notification of the refund with details of the transaction and the refund reason entered by the user. 

If you need to access a full list of refunds, you can access this through the Payments Portal by clicking Payment History and then selecting Refunds.