19.10. Refunds

A refund can only occur when a payment has already been made.

The objective of the payment as being a deposit, direct payment, or donation will not affect the ability to perform refunds as long as it is cash, check, or credit card payment.

Understanding Refunds

Use cases: Why would you offer a refund?

There are generally two common reasons for performing refunds. The client has overpaid for an appointment or the client needs to cancel an appointment and the clinic policy allows for refunding deposits with notice.

1. Overpayment – Refund*
   An overpayment occurs on an appointment where the services or prices change. This could happen when a surgery is declined, services or no longer needed, a subsidy discount is applied, or one-offs such as comped services for an unhappy client.
   
   Repurpose or Refund overpaid amounts on the Financial tab

TIP: If a client has overpaid for services instead of refunding, ask the client if they would like to leave the overpayment as a donation! In this case, use the action button and repurpose the money to a donation. This is a great way to save on credit card fees if the original payment was a credit card.

Overpayments to create “Change Due” is not the same as a refund.
If the client’s total is $18 and they give you $20 – the extra $2 given back to the client, is not a refund. This is the change due amount. In Clinic HQ, you would enter the payment amount as $18, not $20.

2. Cancelled Appointment – Refund Deposit*
   If the client contacts the clinic to cancel their appointment and a deposit was made, the clinic may offer a refund to the client.

NOTE: Discuss your clinic policy with a manager – some clinics may have a no-refund policy for canceled appointments.
Before the appointment can be marked as canceled, the deposit would need to be managed and the action taken to refund the payment. Once an action is taken with the deposit the appointment can be cancelled.

Things to note about Refunds

• Discuss with your manager your clinic’s policy on refunds.
• MX Merchant has a refund threshold in place to prevent fraud. The default is 50 refunds in 24 hours or 10 within 2 minutes.
If your clinic exceeds the threshold, you will see an error banner with “Rapid Refund Activity Detected” If you are constantly getting this message, please call MP Group at 770-818-6188 to review your account. It’s possible there is a lock on your account.

• Process all refunds through Clinic HQ. Do not process refunds via MX Merchant directly.
  

Unable to refund a credit card?

Read about credit card refund errors what they mean and what you should do if you get an error, HERE.