How to process a refund

Refund an order in full, by amount, or by item — and understand which refunds actually move money.

You can refund a paid order from the order’s own page, and you can choose whether to give back the whole amount, a set figure you decide on, or the specific items the customer was unhappy with.

Refund an order

1. In the sidebar, open Orders and click the order to open it.
2. Click Refund in the order header. The button is only there while some of the money is still refundable, so if you have already refunded the order in full it will not appear. If the order was never paid in the first place you will see Cancel order instead, which is a different action and does not send any money anywhere.
3. In the Refund order dialog, choose how much to refund:
   • Full refunds everything that is still refundable on that order.
   • Amount lets you type in a Refund amount, up to the maximum shown.
   • Items lets you pick out particular items and quantities, which is the one to use when only part of the order was wrong, because it also records what went wrong rather than just how much you gave back.
4. If the order was paid using more than one method, use Refund to to say where the money is going back: Cash, Card terminal, Online card, Gift card, Voucher, or Other.
5. Enter a Reason. This is required, and it is what you will rely on if the refund is ever questioned.
6. Click Refund, then Confirm refund to complete it.

Which refunds actually move money

This is the part that catches people out, so it is worth reading carefully.

Online card refunds are genuinely sent back to the customer’s card automatically, because that payment went through our payments provider and the provider can reverse it.

Cash, card terminal, gift card and voucher refunds are only recorded in Dinerly for your books. Dinerly never touched that money in the first place, so it has no way of sending it back, which means you still have to hand over the cash yourself, put the refund through on your card terminal, or reload the gift card or voucher by hand. Dinerly reminds you of this after you confirm, precisely because forgetting it means the customer walks away without their money while your records say they were refunded.

After a refund

The order gains a Refunds history showing what was given back and why, and its status changes to Refunded or Partially refunded depending on how much you returned.

Refunds cannot be undone. If you refund the wrong amount, the way to put it right is to take a new payment for the correct figure rather than trying to reverse the refund.

Last updated 20 September 2026