How do I refund an invoice?

You may refund a customer by partially refunding an active notice, voiding a paid invoice on an active notice, or canceling the notice altogether.

Yes! As of Feb 2024, newspapers on Stripe have the option to partially refund active notices that have been paid by debit or credit card. If you would like access to this for your papers, please reach out to your CSM. 

You will see the dropdown option to Refund Invoice under the Notice Details page of any notice. You may also directly edit an active notice (e.g. remove a run date), and you will be prompted to confirm the price change and partial refund amount. The customer will receive an email notification confirming the refund and the PDF will reflect the refund.

If you wish to cancel a notice that's already been paid, you will see an option to issue a refund for the total amount, and you will have the ability to amend the amount you'd like to refund. This is an alternative way to return part of a payment if you need to partially cancel a notice — for example, after it's already run one or more times in your paper.

First, navigate to the specific public notice's Notice Details page (image below) by selecting the notice in your Active Notices table. Click the downward arrow on the INVOICE PDF button. Select "Delete Invoice" from the dropdown menu that will appear. If the invoice has already been paid, this button will say INVOICE RECEIPT instead.

If the customer has already paid, then a full refund will occur when you cancel the invoice. This happens automatically, with no further work required from you!

Please note you may delete and refund an invoice as long as the following things are true: 

• You haven't yet uploaded an affidavit for the notice

• Column hasn't yet paid you for the notice (you can check this in the activity log!)
  

If you marked the notice as paid after receiving payment outside of Column, then we won't issue a refund when you cancel a notice. Instead, the system will remind you to return funds to the customer if you're deleting their invoice and adjusting the price.

Refunds for invoices paid by debit or credit card or initiated immediately and are typically available to the end customer in 5-10 business days (depending on the bank). If the customer paid by check or ACH and a refund is initiated, Column will issue a check back to the address on file to the customer - a manual refund can take 5-10 business days to process, plus mailing time.