Cancellations & refunds

TruSync checks, in this order, and the first answer it can establish wins:

1. The order posted as a Sales Receipt — the customer paid when they ordered, so the money moved. TruSync creates a Refund Receipt and never voids it. This is how paid orders on Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce and Wix reverse.
2. The order was already partly refunded — a void would reverse the whole Invoice again on top of the refund. TruSync creates a Credit Memo for what is left and never voids it.
3. A payout or settlement already lists the order — the money moved. TruSync creates a Credit Memo.
4. QuickBooks shows nothing applied to the Invoice — its balance still equals its total and no payment is linked to it. Nothing moved, so TruSync voids the Invoice and creates no Credit Memo. The voided Invoice and its number stay in QuickBooks, so there is still a record of the order.
5. TruSync can’t tell — for example QuickBooks didn’t answer, or the Invoice has a partial payment or credit applied. TruSync creates a Credit Memo, and records in its log that this was the fallback. A Credit Memo is the cautious choice: if it turns out to be wrong it is visible and you can correct it, whereas voiding an Invoice you were still owed money on would hide that.

In practice this means:

• Marketplace stores (Amazon, eBay, Walmart) — orders post as Invoices. A cancelled order was never shipped or settled, so its Invoice is normally voided. A Credit Memo appears only when the order shows up in a settlement or has a payment on it.
• Other stores (Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Wix) — a paid order posts as a Sales Receipt and reverses as a Refund Receipt. An order that hadn’t been paid when it synced posted as an Invoice, and is voided if it is still unpaid when cancelled, unless it was partly refunded first, in which case TruSync credits what is left instead.

WooCommerce treats an order whose status changes to Cancelled as a cancellation. A Refunded order is handled as a refund, and a Failed order (a payment that didn’t go through) is not a cancellation and isn’t reversed. Only WooCommerce’s standard statuses are recognised: if a plugin adds or renames a status, cancelling into it isn’t reversed, so use Cancelled.

Moving a WooCommerce order to the Trash reverses it only if the order was not paid. Trash is often just tidying up the order list, so TruSync never reverses a paid order for it: the order shows as Skipped in Sync History with a note, and its sale stays in QuickBooks. To reverse a paid order, set it to Cancelled in WooCommerce. If the order was never synced, nothing is posted.

If you restore an order from the trash after TruSync reversed it, QuickBooks still shows the sale as cancelled and TruSync does not post it again by itself. The restore shows as a Skipped row in Sync History with a note.

To put the sale back, press Re-sync on the order’s other row in Sync History, the one marked Success, not on the Skipped row. Re-sync deletes the original QuickBooks document and its reversal and posts a fresh one. If your QuickBooks books are closed for the date of the original sale, record the sale by hand instead, because Re-sync deletes documents. If the order should stay reversed, nothing needs doing in QuickBooks.

Deleting an order permanently without trashing it first doesn’t reach TruSync, so set it to Cancelled first. A WooCommerce store connected before trash support was added needs to be reconnected once to receive trash events.

There is no setting for this — it follows what actually happened to the money. See Sales Receipt vs. Invoice.

A void is permanent: QuickBooks has no way to un-void an Invoice. A cancelled order shows as a voided Invoice in QuickBooks with a total of zero.

A refund is decided differently: it always posts as its own document — a Refund Receipt where the order posted as a Sales Receipt, a Credit Memo where it posted as an Invoice — because a refund means money went back. The exception is an order whose document is already voided: TruSync skips the refund rather than credit a document that holds nothing, and says so in a Skipped row in Sync History. If an edit voided the document and its replacement has not posted yet, TruSync waits for the replacement and posts the refund against it.

Some cases don’t reach QuickBooks automatically today. Record these in QuickBooks yourself, and check them when you reconcile.

• Amazon refunds from before TruSync started watching your store, and Amazon refunds on orders TruSync never synced. See Amazon refunds and returns below.
• Walmart returns. A cancelled Walmart order is reversed as described above; a refund or return on an order that already shipped doesn’t reach QuickBooks. The refunded money still appears in your Walmart settlement and your bank deposit, so the deposit reconciles — but the sale stays on your books at full value and the returned stock doesn’t come back.

Amazon doesn’t tell TruSync when an order is refunded or returned, so TruSync looks for refunds itself: about every 15 minutes it checks the refunds Amazon has posted to your seller account, and for each one it creates a Credit Memo against the original Invoice, for the amount refunded. The Credit Memo is recorded against the same customer as the Invoice and dated the day TruSync records it.

• A partial refund creates a Credit Memo for that amount only. If Amazon later refunds more on the same order, TruSync credits only the new part.
• The same refund is never credited twice. TruSync works out how much of the order it has already credited and credits the difference.
• Stock goes back for an item Amazon’s returns report shows as delivered back with no SAFE-T or A-to-Z claim, and for one with a claim only once you say it can be resold. Otherwise the Credit Memo credits the money only, as described under What a refund or cancellation does to your inventory.
• Tax is zero on the Credit Memo, because Amazon collected, remitted and refunded the sales tax itself.
• Automatically sync refunds to QuickBooks in Sync Settings applies, as it does for every store. If it is off, refunds are skipped.

TruSync only creates Credit Memos for refunds Amazon posts after it began watching your store. It does not go back and credit earlier refunds, so a refund from before that point still needs a Credit Memo entered in QuickBooks by hand if you want one. TruSync also doesn’t credit a refund for an order it never synced, because there is no TruSync Invoice to credit.

If you already enter Credit Memos by hand for Amazon refunds, stop doing so for new refunds. Otherwise the same refund is credited twice, once by you and once by TruSync.

What happens to the Credit Memo afterwards

It doesn’t sit on the customer as an open credit. When the settlement that carries the refund arrives, the payment TruSync records for that settlement applies the Credit Memo along with paying the invoices, so the credit is used up and the deposit matches what the marketplace actually paid. The refund reduces your revenue once, through the Credit Memo, rather than also being deducted a second time on the deposit.

A few cases behave differently, all deliberately:

• You applied the credit yourself first. TruSync reads each Credit Memo’s remaining balance immediately before it writes the settlement payment, and only applies what is still open. A credit you have already used is left alone.
• The refund is bigger than the settlement. QuickBooks won’t let a payment apply more in credits than it has charges, so TruSync applies what fits and leaves the rest open for the next settlement.
• The refund arrives in a later settlement than the sale. That’s the normal case and it works — the credit is applied by whichever settlement carries the refund, against that settlement’s invoices.

On Wix, TruSync counts only money that was actually returned to the customer. A refund that is still pending, or that failed, adds nothing to the refunded amount, and a refund that has returned nothing yet is not reported. TruSync picks the refund up once it succeeds.

If TruSync can’t read an order’s refunds from Wix at that moment, it tries again later rather than treating the order as having no refund.

On BigCommerce, Wix and WooCommerce, always issue a refund from your store’s order screen, never only in your payment provider. TruSync is told about a refund by your store, not by Braintree, Stripe or PayPal. If you refund a customer directly in your payment provider and don’t also record it against the order in your store, the order never changes, TruSync never hears about it, and no Refund Receipt or Credit Memo is created in QuickBooks.

This is true on all three platforms and for every payment provider, including BigCommerce Payments. What matters is where the refund is performed, not which provider processed the payment.

The money still leaves your account and still shows up in your payout, which is what makes this easy to miss: the bank side looks right while your sales figure stays too high.

TruSync does not create the missing document on its own. A refund it has not seen your store confirm could be wrong, and a wrong credit in your books is worse than a missing one.

If you already refunded in your payment provider

Do not refund the customer again. Create the matching document in QuickBooks yourself, for the amount that was refunded. Which document depends on how the order posted: a Refund Receipt if it posted as a Sales Receipt (the customer paid when they ordered), a Credit Memo against the Invoice if it posted as an Invoice. A Refund Receipt against an open Invoice would leave the Invoice standing, so check the order’s document type in QuickBooks first.

If the payout from Braintree, Stripe or PayPal is connected to TruSync, the payout’s detail page lists these refunds under Refunds with no QuickBooks document, naming the order and the amount that has no document. The notice stays until TruSync has a document for the refund. TruSync can’t see a document you enter in QuickBooks yourself, so it can remain after you have fixed your books. It appears only after the payout containing the refund has reached TruSync, only for orders TruSync synced, and only on BigCommerce, Wix and WooCommerce stores. It is not shown if Automatically sync refunds to QuickBooks is off in Sync Settings. It is also not shown when TruSync can’t confirm the order and the payout are in the same currency, which includes older orders synced before TruSync recorded each order’s currency; for those, check your payouts for refunds you made in your payment provider.

Refunds and cancellations are not treated the same. A cancelled order restocks on its own, because the order never shipped. A refund puts an item back in stock only when your store says the item came back, and TruSync reads that from each refund, not from a setting. There is no store-wide restock setting.

How each store tells TruSync:

• Shopify — whether you restocked the item when you refunded it. Tick Restock item on the refund and the unit goes back in QuickBooks too; leave it unticked and only the money is credited. Refunding an item that hasn’t shipped yet counts too: Shopify puts that stock back, so TruSync does as well, and if the order is later cancelled TruSync puts back only the units the refund didn’t already return.
• WooCommerce — whether WooCommerce restocked the item when you refunded it, which it records on the order line.
• Walmart — Walmart’s return record is read for each returned line, and TruSync is not yet in use with any live Walmart store. An item Walmart shows as delivered to its return center counts as having come back, and TruSync then asks you whether it can be resold (below). Until then the refund credits the money only.
• Amazon — TruSync reads Amazon’s returns report, line by line. An item Amazon shows as delivered back with no claim on it came back through Amazon’s ordinary returns process, so it goes back in stock. An item delivered back that Amazon has raised a SAFE-T or A-to-Z claim on is the one TruSync asks you about (below), and the question says what Amazon did, for example that it granted a SAFE-T claim of $13.54. A claim Amazon raises after the refund was recorded is not seen, so that item will already have gone back in stock. An item with no delivery date on the report, or one Amazon only delivers after the refund was recorded, credits the money only.
• eBay, Wix and BigCommerce — these don’t say whether the item came back, so their refunds credit the money only and nothing is restocked.

An item that came back but wasn’t restocked, with nothing to say whether it can be resold, is the one thing TruSync asks about on a store that reports returns. The refund is held as Returned Item: Resellable? in Order Exceptions, and nothing is posted until you answer. See Returned items you’re asked about.

A refund that restocks nothing posts as a single “Refund” line with no inventory effect.

If the order was partly refunded first, TruSync puts back only the units that refund didn’t already return, so a refund that restocked 1 of 3 units, then a cancel, and 2 go back. A partial refund that didn’t restock leaves all 3 to go back. Two cases put nothing back: an order that was fully refunded before it was cancelled, and an older refund, recorded before TruSync itemised the units each refund returned, that did put stock back. Check the item’s quantity in QuickBooks in those cases.

When a refund does restock, TruSync takes the units from the refund itself, as your store reports them for each refunded line. It does not use the original order’s quantity, so a refund for part of a line never restocks the whole order.

A refunded line that reports no units at all (only an amount) still puts one unit back when it restocks, because QuickBooks won’t accept a zero-quantity line with an amount. If a refund like that shows a unit coming back that you didn’t receive, check the item’s quantity in QuickBooks.

A refund restocks only when the store sends item detail with it. If the store reports just a refund amount with no item detail, TruSync posts a single “Refund” line and no stock changes.

A cancellation is different because the whole order is being reversed, so the original order’s units are the right count. See the restock FAQ below.

Restocking happens in QuickBooks, on items it tracks as inventory. Items that aren’t tracked as inventory have no quantity to restock.

When TruSync voids an Invoice for a cancellation, QuickBooks puts the Invoice’s stock back itself, bundle components included, so TruSync makes no separate inventory adjustment. When TruSync instead creates a Credit Memo or Refund Receipt for a cancellation, it puts the cancelled units back on that document. The result is the same either way (apart from the earlier-refund exception above).

Returned items you’re asked about

When your store says an item came back and nothing says whether it can be resold, TruSync holds the refund as Returned Item: Resellable? and doesn’t post it. Putting a damaged item back in stock would make your storefront advertise stock you don’t have, so it asks. Nothing in your store or QuickBooks changes until you answer.

Press Answer and say, for each item:

• Sellable — it came back and you can resell it. It goes back in stock in QuickBooks.
• Not sellable — it came back damaged or unusable. The money is credited and nothing is restocked; writing the item off is yours to do in QuickBooks.
• Never arrived — the customer didn’t send it back. The money is credited and nothing is restocked.

Nothing is pre-selected, and every item needs an answer. The refund posts by itself once you’ve answered. Your answer applies to that refund only. You can also ask Trudy, who explains the held refund and records your answer once you’ve said what happened to each item. TruSync doesn’t ask when the store can’t say whether goods came back, or when you already restocked the item in your store yourself.

When the money moved, the original transaction is treated as complete and permanent. TruSync creates a separate Refund Receipt or Credit Memo dated on the cancellation or refund date, rather than voiding or modifying the original.

This matches how your payment processor actually handles it: a credit card batch includes both the original charge and the refund as two separate transactions, even when they net to zero. Voiding the original would leave QuickBooks out of step with what your processor’s batch actually shows.

This applies when the Invoice was never paid, never settled, and had no earlier refund. If it was partly refunded first, a void would reverse that part twice, so TruSync credits what is left instead.

When no money moved, a Credit Memo would record the reversal of a payment that never happened. The Invoice and its Credit Memo would then sit in QuickBooks as a pair that matches nothing in any payout, and you would have to clear it by hand. Voiding the Invoice removes it from your sales and receivables while keeping the document and its number as a trail.

A partial refund — an item that didn’t ship, a shipping cost refund, or a general adjustment — creates the same document type a full refund would on that store, for the partial amount: a Refund Receipt where the order posted as a Sales Receipt, a Credit Memo where it posted as an Invoice.

The cases above under Where TruSync doesn’t reverse an order yet apply to partial refunds too — a Walmart partial refund doesn’t reach QuickBooks any more than a full one does. A partial Amazon refund does: it creates a Credit Memo for that amount.

A Refund Receipt carries the order number and nothing else. Order 102307 posts a Refund Receipt numbered 102307, because QuickBooks allows a Refund Receipt to share its order’s number.

A Credit Memo carries the order number plus -C. Order 102307 posts a Credit Memo numbered 102307-C. If the same order gets a second Credit Memo, for a later partial refund or a cancellation after one, it is 102307-C2, then 102307-C3, and so on. The Credit Memo’s own memo reads “Refund for” or “Cancellation refund for” and names the order, so you can tell which it is.

The suffix is there because a Credit Memo cannot always take the same number as the Invoice it reverses.

Searching the order number in QuickBooks finds the Invoice, and the Credit Memos with it, except where the order number is long.

Long order numbers are shortened from the second Credit Memo. An Amazon order number such as 113-8972335-2835459 keeps its full number for the first Credit Memo: 113-8972335-2835459-C is exactly 21 characters, QuickBooks’s limit. From the second, the number is shortened, so -C2 is written as 335-2835459-162a16-C2. That number no longer contains the whole order number, but it still ends in the suffix and carries the last digits of the order number. It is the same rule that shortens an edit’s -E2.

Occasionally a marketplace reports a cancelled order with no prices at all. TruSync then credits what it recorded when it created the original document: each item keeps the amount it was billed at, and whatever those items don’t account for (shipping, for example) is credited on a Refund item. On a marketplace that collects sales tax itself (Amazon, eBay), tax is not part of that remainder: see Sales tax on marketplace refunds and cancellations. If the items’ billed amounts add up to more than the refund because of a discount, TruSync credits them less a discount line, so the Credit Memo matches what was refunded.

If TruSync still can’t work out an amount, it stops. The order appears under your order exceptions with a message saying so, and you are sent an alert. This is TruSync declining on purpose to write a credit worth nothing, so your books are not left with a Credit Memo that credits nothing against an open Invoice. Nothing was sent to QuickBooks, so nothing there needs undoing. The exception does have a Retry button, but pressing it re-runs the same cancellation and it stops for the same reason — there is nothing on your side to change first. Contact support with the order number and we will post it.

When TruSync needs a Refund item and your QuickBooks file doesn’t have one, it creates it. It posts to the Income account you chose under Accounts in Sync Settings. If you haven’t chosen one, TruSync uses the income account your products already post to, but only when most of them agree. It never picks an account from a list.

If TruSync can’t tell, or the account you chose isn’t an active Income account (an asset account, for example), the refund or cancellation is not posted: TruSync stops rather than guess an account, and nothing is written to QuickBooks, so nothing there is wrong. It appears under your order exceptions with a message saying why, and you are sent an alert. Set the Income account under Accounts in Sync Settings, then press Retry on the exception in Order Exceptions. TruSync re-runs the cancellation or refund itself, and never touches the original document. Retry works once: the exception closes as soon as the re-run is sent, so check Sync History for the order to see whether it posted. If it failed again for the same reason, a fresh exception appears; if it failed for a passing reason, such as QuickBooks being briefly unavailable, Sync History shows the failure and no new exception is raised — contact support with the order number in that case. The same rule applies to the discount line TruSync adds when it has to credit a discounted order from the original sale. An inactive Refund item in QuickBooks isn’t used; reactivate it, or rename it, so TruSync can create a fresh one.

On marketplaces that collect and remit sales tax themselves as a facilitator (Amazon and eBay), TruSync records the cancellations and refunds it does create with zero tax. The marketplace collected that tax from the buyer, remitted it, and refunded it to the buyer, so you never held it and have no tax credit to reverse.

This matches how those orders post in the first place, with tax at zero. It also sets the amount: a cancellation of a whole order is credited for the total the original Invoice carries in QuickBooks, which leaves the marketplace’s tax out. It is not credited for what the buyer paid, which includes that tax, so a cancelled Amazon order that cost the buyer 14.95 against an Invoice of 13.94 is credited 13.94. For stores where you collect your own sales tax, the refunded tax is still reversed.

When you collect your own sales tax (or GST/VAT), a refund credits the tax as well as the price, so the Credit Memo or Refund Receipt total matches the money you refunded.

• Shopify: Shopify states how much tax each refund returned, including the tax on refunded shipping, and TruSync credits exactly that figure. A partial refund of an order that mixes taxed and untaxed items carries the right tax, and a refund Shopify says carried no tax credits none.
• WooCommerce: WooCommerce states the tax when you refund specific items, shipping or fees, and TruSync credits exactly that figure. A refund you enter as a single amount, with nothing selected, carries no tax figure, so TruSync works it out from the order, as described below.
• BigCommerce: BigCommerce states the tax only on a refund it worked out itself. When you type the refund amount in yourself, the refund carries no tax figure, so TruSync works it out from the order, as described below.
• Wix: Wix states no tax on a refund, but it does say which items came back and how much was refunded for each. TruSync takes each refunded item’s own tax rate from the order and applies it to that amount, and does the same for refunded shipping and fees. If TruSync can’t work out the tax on any part of the refund this way, it works the tax out from the order, as described below.
• Cancelling what is left of a part-refunded order where the store stated the tax on every earlier refund: the credit carries the order’s tax less the tax of those refunds, so the credits together add up to the tax the original sale carried. If any earlier refund stated no tax, TruSync works the tax out from the order instead.
• Working it out from the order applies to any refund above where the store stated none, or where TruSync couldn’t work out the tax from the refunded items. A refund of the whole order carries exactly the tax the original transaction carried, to the cent. A partial refund is split in proportion only when one tax rate applies to every item, shipping and discount on the order. On a partly-taxable order TruSync can’t tell which part you refunded, so it credits the full amount with no tax rather than guess.

When TruSync can’t place the tax, the credit still posts for the full amount you refunded, and a line is added to the credit’s private note, which your customer doesn’t see: “TruSync could not tell how much tax this refund returned and credited none.” Open the credit in QuickBooks and add the tax if the items you refunded were taxed. TruSync doesn’t raise an Order Exceptions entry for this, because nothing is held back. If the store reported the refund’s tax, the credit carries no such note.

On a QuickBooks company that uses global tax (Australia, the UK), the credit carries the tax on a tax line with your mapped tax rate, and each line it credits carries your tax code, the same way the original sale does. A credit missing either one is refused by QuickBooks rather than posted, and the order waits in Order Exceptions with the reason.

Refunds posted before this was in place carry no tax. We can put the tax back on them in place — the amount you refunded doesn’t change, it is only re-split between the sale and the tax you owe — but we don’t do it without asking you first, and we tell you exactly which credits changed.

Either way the deposit matches what actually settled to your bank account; what differs is whether the refund is a line on it.

A refund with a Credit Memo — a marketplace order, on a store whose settlement posts as a Bank Deposit — is applied by the settlement payment, so the deposit carries no separate refund line. The payment is smaller by the credit instead. See What happens to the Credit Memo afterwards.

Everything else keeps both sides as separate line items: the original charge and a negative refund line. That covers refunds handled by a Refund Receipt, refunds the processor paid out with no document in QuickBooks, the uncredited remainder of a partly-applied Credit Memo, and every store whose settlement posts as a journal entry rather than a Bank Deposit.

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