Store Credits & Refunds
When a customer returns merchandise or you owe them money, you have three ways to settle it:
- Cash / card refund — money goes back the way it came in. Use when they want to be made whole right now.
- Store credit — a balance on the customer’s account that applies automatically against future invoices.
- Gift card — a transferable balance not tied to a specific customer.
To issue a store credit
- From the Store Credits list, click + New.
- Pick the customer and enter the amount and reason.
- Optionally link the credit to the original invoice (helps with reporting).
- Save.
The credit appears on the customer’s AR detail page and applies to their next invoice automatically (oldest-first, like a payment).
To refund cash or card
Where you start depends on where the money is:
- An invoice you are voiding. Void asks what happens to the money paid on it. Choose Refund it to the customer. See Finalize, Void, and Reopen Invoices.
- An invoice that owes the customer (a return, or an overpayment). On its Payments tab, click Refund $X to customer and pick the method: a Stripe charge, cash, a check, a card refunded on your terminal, a store credit or a gift card.
- Money sitting unapplied on the customer’s account. On the customer’s AR page, open the Payments tab, click the payment, and click Refund. Choose where it goes back to (the original payment, or any of your shop’s payment methods), the amount (up to what is unapplied) and the refund date.
Every refund asks for the date the money actually went back, so a refund you gave last week can be entered today with last week’s date. It can’t be before the payment, in the future, or in a closed accounting period. A card taken through JewelTrak’s own reader or a payment link is refunded through Stripe on the spot and dated today.
To pay a store credit back out in cash
A credit the customer no longer wants to spend can be paid back. There are two places to do it, and they do the same thing:
- Accounting → Store Credits — click Refund on the credit’s row.
- The customer’s AR page — the Credits table has a Refund button on any credit with a balance left.
Either one asks for the date, the amount (defaulting to what’s left), the method and a check or reference number. You can refund part of a credit; the rest stays on the customer’s account. When the last of it is paid out the credit flips to Depleted on its own.
A refund is refused if it exceeds what’s actually left, or if its date falls in a closed accounting period.
The receipt
Every refund appears as its own line underneath the credit on Accounting → Store Credits, showing the date, the method and the amount — with a Receipt link beside it.
The receipt is a PDF you can print, save or hand to the customer. It names who was paid and their address, which credit the money came out of, the method and reference number, who processed it, and three figures your bookkeeper will want: what the credit was issued for, what this refund paid out, and what’s left on the credit afterwards. There’s a signature line, because the customer is receiving money.
Receipt downloads the PDF — it does not open a new tab, so you stay where you were. Email sends the same PDF to the customer, with the usual options to copy yourself and to copy the store.
Everything on it is recorded at the moment of the refund, so reprinting one later shows what happened on the day — not what the customer record says now.
The common case: a return that overpays the invoice
A return worth more than the customer still owes leaves money on the credit after the invoice closes. Apply the credit to the open invoice first — that settles what they owe — then refund whatever remains, which is the cash they actually paid.
Returns (memo returns and merchandise returns)
For returned merchandise specifically, use the Memo Returns module — it brings the inventory item back into stock at the same time as the financial entry. A plain store credit doesn’t restock anything; it’s a financial-only adjustment.
The Store Credits Ledger report
The Store Credits Ledger report (Reports module) is the accounting view of your outstanding store-credit liability. One row per credit — Credit Date, Expiry, Customer, Store, and the Amount issued / Used / Refunded / Remaining plus Status. Filter by date range, status, and store. The sum of the Remaining column is your total store-credit liability. Unlike a gift card — which is transferable and not tied to anyone — a store credit belongs to a specific customer, so this ledger shows the customer on every row.