Failed payments, disputes, and refunds
Handle donation statuses, recurring payment failures, disputes, refunds, and offline corrections.
Failed payments, disputes, and refunds
Start with the donation status and source. The dashboard and database distinguish pending, succeeded, failed, refunded, and disputed donations. A recurring subscription can additionally be active, paused, past due, unpaid, cancellation-scheduled, or canceled.
Failed recurring payments
The Donations overview can show a failed-payment banner. Open the relevant project’s Recurring tab or the donor portal to identify the affected subscription. The donor should use the payment-update action to update the payment method or settle an open invoice. The application can retry failed recurring charges over the following days; repeated failures can end the recurring donation automatically.
Do not treat a failed payment as raised money. Check that the donation status is succeeded before including it in a confirmed total or receipt process.
Refund an online donation
An administrator can refund an eligible online donation from the project’s Transactions page:
- Confirm that the donation is succeeded.
- Confirm that its source is online.
- Choose Refund and confirm the action.
- Wait for the payment-provider webhook to update the donation status and project total.
Only succeeded online donations with a Stripe payment are eligible for this path. The refund is sent through Stripe; the local status and project total are reconciled by the provider webhook. A refund is not the same as deleting a transaction.
Offline corrections
Offline donations cannot be refunded through Stripe because they have no Stripe payment. For an incorrect offline record, use the offline delete action and correct the record only after the organization has checked its bookkeeping and receipt implications.
Disputes
A disputed donation means the donor charged the payment back through their bank. It is distinct from an organization-initiated refund. Review the provider details and keep the organization’s response and records with the transaction.
Escalation checklist
Record:
- Organization and project
- Donation identifier
- Source and status
- Amount and currency
- Time of the failed payment, refund, or dispute
- Provider message or failure reason
- Whether the donor was contacted
Never include a full card number, secret key, portal token, or private donor data in a support request.