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 can partially refund active notices paid by debit or credit card. If you would like access to this for your papers, please contact 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 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 be able to amend the amount you'd like to refund. This is an alternative way to return part of a payment if you need to cancel the notice entirely but want your customer to pay for the published run dates. We recommend only canceling a notice after it's started publication and paid for if the customer does not need the affidavit or the notice was placed in error.

If a partial refund isn't available for your newspaper, you can void the transaction, refund the total amount, and issue a new invoice.

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, they will automatically receive a full refund when you cancel the invoice. No further work is required!

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 need to refund the notice after uploading the affidavit, please contact Support for assistance.

If you marked the notice as paid after receiving payment outside of Column, 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 delete their invoice and adjust the price.

Refunds for invoices paid by debit or credit card or initiated immediately 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.