Refund or void a payment

These are two different instruments and they are not interchangeable.

Void a payment cancels a payment that should never have been recorded — the wrong amount typed in, the wrong order, a duplicate entry. The payment’s status becomes Voided.

Refund a payment gives money back on a payment that was correctly taken. The payment’s status becomes Refunded.

The rule of thumb: if the money never really moved, void it; if it did, refund it.

Voiding a payment

Needs the void control capability and the void payments permission.

That permission is held by no standard role. Out of the box only the owner has it, through the owner’s blanket access. If you want a general manager to be able to void payments, you create a custom role and give it to them explicitly. That is intentional: voiding a payment is the one action that makes money disappear from the record with no counter-entry.

Refunding a payment

Needs the refunds capability on your plan and the refund payments permission.

The refund dialog is explicit that it is a controlled action:

Manager approval required. Idempotent retry-safe.

“Idempotent retry-safe” means what it sounds like: if the request times out and you try again, the customer is refunded once, not twice.

You enter:

1. Amount — the full payment or part of it.
2. Reason — Customer request, Wrong item served, Quality issue, Overcharge, Duplicate charge, or Other.
3. Note — required when the reason is Other. “Add a note for reason Other.”
4. Manager username and Manager PIN — a six-digit PIN. “Enter manager username and six-digit PIN.”

As with voids, the approving manager does not need to be logged in on the device.

Which one the situation calls for

Situation	Do this
An item was wrong and is still unpaid	Void the item, not the payment
An item was wrong and is paid for	Refund, partially
You typed $200 instead of $20	Void the payment and record it again
The same payment got entered twice	Void the duplicate
The guest is unhappy with the meal	Refund, reason Quality issue
The whole order was a mistake and nothing is paid	Cancel the order

Where it shows up

Refunds and voids appear on the order, in the transaction report, and in the day report. Nothing is deleted and nothing is silent — which is the point, both for your own books and for anyone auditing them later.