Refunds & returns

Somebody is at the counter with a bag and a receipt. This page covers finding their sale, giving back all of it or just the shampoo, and why a manager has to scan their badge before the money moves.

Every refund in tech-pos is tied to an original sale. There is no "just give them twenty dollars" button — the till has to know which sale, which lines, and how many of each.

Getting into refund mode

1. On the till, press F6, or tap Refund next to the search box, or open Menu at the bottom right and choose Refund…
2. The screen switches: the search box becomes a receipt lookup, and the money side is headed REFUND instead of a total.
3. To back out at any point, press Esc or tap Exit refund.

If you cannot see any of those buttons, your role does not carry the right to create returns. Ask a manager to do it, or to change your role.

Finding the original sale

With the receipt in hand

Scan the barcode printed on the receipt, or type the receipt number and press Enter. The lookup box says Scan REC-… / sale # / token — it takes the receipt number, the sale number, or the token from a digital receipt link. Tap Load if you typed it.

Without the receipt

1. Tap Find order.
2. Search by receipt number, order number, amount or cashier name — the box says exactly that.
3. Sort the list if it helps: Newest first, Oldest first, Amount high → low, Amount low → high.
4. Tap the sale to load it.

The list only shows sales that can still be refunded — completed or partly refunded — from the last thirty days, up to fifty of them. If nothing matches you get No completed orders match — try another search or scan a receipt.

Refunding the whole sale

1. Load the sale. Every returnable line arrives already ticked, at its full remaining quantity.
2. Check the REFUND figure on the right matches what you expect to hand back.
3. Leave Reason as Customer return or type something more useful.
4. Choose the Tender: Cash, Card / original, Store credit or Gift card where the shop offers them, or Other.
5. Tap Continue refund.
6. A manager scans their badge (see below) and the refund posts.

Refunding part of a sale

Two controls, and you can use both on the same refund:

1. Take a line out: tap the tick at the end of a row. A ticked row (✓) is being refunded; an unticked one (+) is not, and drops to zero in the total.
2. Return fewer than they bought: tap the quantity on the row. The keypad opens; type how many are coming back and tap Apply. You cannot go above what is still returnable — each row shows sold N so you can see the original quantity.

The REFUND total updates as you go. Partly refunding a sale leaves the rest available: come back tomorrow with the same receipt and the remaining quantity is still there to return.

Lines you cannot refund

Some rows arrive greyed out with the reason written on them, and no way to tick them:

If the whole sale is blocked — the store has refunds switched off, or the sale is not in a refundable state — the message appears across the top and Continue refund stays dead.

What the manager badge is for

After Continue refund a small window appears: Authorize refund, with the hint Scan manager badge to post the refund. The manager scans or types their badge into the Manager badge box and taps Authorize.

The badge belongs to someone whose role can authorise voids and refunds — in practice a store manager or above. A cashier's or a supervisor's badge will be refused. If it is rejected the window stays open with the reason, so you can try another badge without starting the refund over.

When it goes through you get a confirmation naming both numbers — Refund posted · Order #… → refund #…. The refund is its own sale record, so it appears in orders, in reports, and in the drawer's expected cash when it was given in cash.

Where the money goes back

Refunding onto store credit

Store credit belongs to a named customer — that is the whole difference from a gift card, which belongs to whoever is holding it. A balance nobody owns cannot be spent, looked up, or argued about later, so a refund to store credit with no customer is refused: Store credit has to belong to somebody. Attach a customer to this refund, or refund to cash or card instead.

Usually the customer on the original sale is used automatically. A sale rung as a walk-in can still be credited to somebody named at the returns desk.

Before the refund is posted the till says what it will do: A. Okonkwo has $15.00 in store credit — this refund makes it $33.40. The same new balance is printed on the refund receipt, because the number the customer leaves with is the whole point of the tender.

Refunding onto a gift card

1. Choose Gift card as the tender.
2. Scan the customer's card, or a blank card off the rack, into Gift card number, and press Check card.
3. Read what the till says back. For a card it already knows: Card ••••0001 holds $5.00 — this refund makes it $18.40. For a code it has never seen: New card ••••0007 — it will be issued with $18.40 on it. Hand the customer the card you just scanned.
4. Continue refund, and the manager badge as usual.

There is no path that invents a code and prints it on a receipt: either way a real piece of plastic was scanned and is in the customer's hand when they leave. A card that was spent down to nothing can be topped up again by a refund and spends normally afterwards — an empty card is just a card.

Two refusals, both said in words rather than as a database error: a card the shop voided or expired cannot be loaded, because value put back on a dead card is money the customer can never spend; and a card belonging to another branch cannot be loaded from this till.

What a refund does to loyalty points

Points move on a refund whether or not the sale was paid with them, and in both directions. Nobody has to remember to do it — it happens inside the same transaction as the goods coming back.

• Points that paid for the goods come back. If the customer settled part of the ticket in points, that part is returned to their balance and only the rest goes back in cash. A $30 sale paid with $20 of points and the rest in cash refunds $20 to the balance and the remainder out of the drawer — the drawer never gives back money it never took.
• Points the sale earned are clawed back. The goods went back on the shelf, so the reward that rode on them is un-earned. Without this, buy → earn → refund → repeat prints points for nothing.

Points come back at the rate that was stamped on the tender when the sale was rung, not at today's rate, so changing the redeem rate cannot make a refund hand back more or less than was taken.

A refund receipt states what the sale did to the balance and what is left, for the same reason the gift-card balance is printed: nobody can look a points balance up for a customer at the register, and a clawback is something they especially deserve to see in writing rather than discover later.