Correcting a payment mistake (void vs refund)

Sooner or later you will get it wrong. You will hit Paid cash when the client actually paid by card. You will record a payment against the wrong booking. You will mark a visit On the house and then change your mind. That is normal, and it takes a few seconds to fix.

What matters is understanding that there are two different buttons for two different situations, and that choosing between them is not a matter of taste:

• Undo — “I was wrong to write that down.” No money moves. You are simply crossing out a bad line in the ledger.
• Refund — “the client really is getting their money back.” Money actually leaves.

Mix the two up and one of two unpleasant things happens: either you hand money back to a client who should not have received it, or you believe you refunded someone when you did not. This article is about avoiding both.

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1. The difference in plain words

Imagine you keep the till on a sheet of paper.

Undo is for a line that should never have existed — you wrote down 25 for Ivan, but Ivan paid nothing. You take a ruler and strike the line out. The line stays on the page (you can still see it was there, and who struck it), but it no longer counts toward the total at the bottom.

Refund is for a line that was correct — the client really did pay — but now you are giving the money back. You strike nothing out. You write a new line underneath: “returned 25”. Both lines remain, and the total is the first minus the second.

	Undo	Refund
When to use it	The record was wrong from the start	The record was right, but the money goes back to the client
Does money move	No. Nothing leaves the till	Yes. The client gets the money
What happens to the row	Stays in history, struck through, labelled Voided	Stays untouched; a new “Refund” row appears below it
Does it count toward totals	No. It vanishes from revenue as if it never happened	Both rows count: the payment adds, the refund subtracts
Can it be reversed	Yes. Press again and the row comes back to life	Not directly — you would have to void the refund itself

The rule in one sentence: if money physically moved in or out of the till, you want a Refund. If you only pressed the wrong button, you want Undo.

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2. Where it happens

Both actions live in the same place — the Payment section of the booking itself. There is no separate “corrections” page.

Open the booking whichever way suits you; the panel is identical:

1. Schedule → click the booking → the panel opens on the right.
2. Money → Payments → click a row in the table.
3. Money → Who owes me → expand the client → click the visit.
4. Money → Finish the day → click a booking in the list.

Scroll down to Payment. You will see three things:

• the state — a coloured badge: Unpaid, Paid, Partial, Overpaid, Refunded or Comped;
• the numbers — Due, Paid and Outstanding;
• the history — a list of every individual movement on this booking.

The history is the part that matters here. Each row is one movement and carries its own Undo button on the right.

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3. Step by step: voiding a wrong entry

Say you hit Paid cash €25.00 but the client handed over nothing.

1. Open the booking and scroll to Payment.

2. Find the row in the history. It reads Payment · cash on the left and +25.00 EUR on the right, in green.

3. On the right of that row, press Undo.

4. A question appears: “Undo this payment?” Underneath it says the record stays in history as voided but stops counting toward the totals, and that 25.00 EUR will be returned.

   The word “returned” sounds alarming, but it only means “returned to the outstanding balance” — the client owes 25 again. No money travels to the client.

5. Confirm with Undo.

6. A green toast appears at the bottom: “Payment record voided”.

Immediately afterwards you will see that:

• the history row is struck through with a grey Voided badge;
• Paid has dropped by 25 and Outstanding has risen by the same;
• the badge at the top is back to Unpaid;
• the amount has disappeared from Money → Payments and from the day and month reports.

Now you can record the correct payment.

Undoing the undo

Voided a good row by mistake? Press Undo on that same struck-through row again — it comes back to life and counts once more. Voiding is not final and nothing is ever lost.

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4. What voiding does not do

This is where misunderstandings usually start. Remember four things:

• It does not put money back on the client’s card. If the payment came through Stripe, voiding only tidies up your own books — the client’s money is still with Stripe. To actually return it you need a Refund. See Refunds & cancellations.
• It does not delete the row. The history is a journal — nothing is ever removed from it. That is deliberate: you can always see what was done and by whom.
• It does not notify the client. No email, no SMS goes out when you void a row.
• It does not cancel the booking. The client’s slot stays in the schedule. Removing that is a separate action — Cancel booking.

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5. Undoing “On the house”

On the house means “this visit is settled, but no money is coming” — a haircut for a friend, say. Technically it is also a row in the history, just of the Comp kind.

If you marked it by mistake:

1. Open the booking → Payment section.
2. Find the Comp row in the history.
3. Press Undo next to it.
4. A question appears: “Undo the on-the-house mark?” — confirm.

The booking returns to Unpaid and is waiting for payment again.

Why this matters: while a booking is comped it is excluded from your revenue and never appears in Who owes me. Mark one by mistake and forget, and that money simply drops out of the reports — you will not miss it on screen, you will miss it in the drawer.

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6. Undoing “Forgive”

Money → Who owes me has a Forgive button, for writing off a debt you are never going to collect (the client moved away, the amount is trivial, the phone call is not worth it).

Technically Forgive does the same thing as a comp: it writes a row that settles the visit without money. So it is undone the same way — through the payment history of that specific booking, with Undo.

Do not go looking for a “restore debt” button in the debtors list; there isn’t one. The route is always through the booking.

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7. The rules you will run into

The system deliberately refuses a few things. A red error is almost always one of these — and each one is protecting you from something.

Message	What it means	What to do
Payment exceeds the outstanding amount (with the maximum shown)	You are recording more than the client owes	Check the figure. If they genuinely paid more, void the old row first and record the right one
Refund exceeds the amount paid	You are returning more than was ever paid	Return at most what Paid shows
Nothing to comp	You are marking a booking that is already settled	Void the existing payments first, if you really mean to make it free
The amount must be above zero	You entered 0 or a negative number	Enter a real amount. For a zero payment use On the house
The date cannot be in the future	You are dating a payment tomorrow	Payments are recorded with today’s date or backdated — never forward

Two details that are not errors but are worth knowing:

• Payments can be backdated. Handy when you are entering yesterday’s takings today. Careful though: the amount lands in that day’s report, not today’s.
• A comp row has no payment method. There is no such thing as “on the house, in cash” — so the field simply isn’t there.

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8. Quick cheat sheet

The situation	What to press
I hit “cash” but it was card	Undo the wrong row, then record the right one
I recorded a payment on the wrong client	Undo it there, record it on the right booking
The client paid, then changed their mind and wants the money	Refund
I marked “On the house” but they actually paid	Undo the comp row, then record the payment
I forgave a debt and the client turned up and paid	Undo the row, then record the payment
I handed cash back by hand and never recorded it	Record a Refund through the “Cash / manual” channel
I issued a refund by mistake	Undo the refund row — but if the money already went to the card, this will not bring it back

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What’s next

• Recording a payment — how to get it right the first time.
• Refunds & cancellations — real refunds, the two channels, and why you never do it from Stripe.
• Payments & revenue — where to see every movement in one place.