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Cancellations & refunds

TruSync reverses a cancelled order by asking one question: did the money move? If it did, TruSync records the reversal as its own transaction and leaves the original alone — a Refund Receipt against a Sales Receipt, a Credit Memo against an Invoice. If it didn’t, because an Invoice was never paid and never appeared in a settlement, TruSync voids the Invoice and creates no credit document.

A refund (money going back to a customer) always posts as its own document and never voids anything. The void applies only to a cancellation.

Editing an order is also different — correcting a quantity or a price does void the original and post a replacement, because the sale still stands and only its figures changed. See When you edit an order that’s already synced.

Which document a cancellation creates

TruSync checks, in this order, and the first answer it can establish wins:

  1. The order posted as a Sales Receipt — the customer paid when they ordered, so the money moved. TruSync creates a Refund Receipt and never voids it. This is how paid orders on Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce and Wix reverse.
  2. The order was already partly refunded — a void would reverse the whole Invoice again on top of the refund. TruSync creates a Credit Memo for what is left and never voids it.
  3. A payout or settlement already lists the order — the money moved. TruSync creates a Credit Memo.
  4. QuickBooks shows nothing applied to the Invoice — its balance still equals its total and no payment is linked to it. Nothing moved, so TruSync voids the Invoice and creates no Credit Memo. The voided Invoice and its number stay in QuickBooks, so there is still a record of the order.
  5. TruSync can’t tell — for example QuickBooks didn’t answer, or the Invoice has a partial payment or credit applied. TruSync creates a Credit Memo, and records in its log that this was the fallback. A Credit Memo is the cautious choice: if it turns out to be wrong it is visible and you can correct it, whereas voiding an Invoice you were still owed money on would hide that.

In practice this means:

WooCommerce treats an order whose status changes to Cancelled as a cancellation. A Refunded order is handled as a refund, and a Failed order (a payment that didn’t go through) is not a cancellation and isn’t reversed. Only WooCommerce’s standard statuses are recognised: if a plugin adds or renames a status, cancelling into it isn’t reversed, so use Cancelled.

Moving a WooCommerce order to the Trash reverses it only if the order was not paid. Trash is often just tidying up the order list, so TruSync never reverses a paid order for it: the order shows as Skipped in Sync History with a note, and its sale stays in QuickBooks. To reverse a paid order, set it to Cancelled in WooCommerce. If the order was never synced, nothing is posted.

If you restore an order from the trash after TruSync reversed it, QuickBooks still shows the sale as cancelled and TruSync does not post it again by itself. The restore shows as a Skipped row in Sync History with a note.

To put the sale back, press Re-sync on the order’s other row in Sync History, the one marked Success, not on the Skipped row. Re-sync deletes the original QuickBooks document and its reversal and posts a fresh one. If your QuickBooks books are closed for the date of the original sale, record the sale by hand instead, because Re-sync deletes documents. If the order should stay reversed, nothing needs doing in QuickBooks.

Deleting an order permanently without trashing it first doesn’t reach TruSync, so set it to Cancelled first. A WooCommerce store connected before trash support was added needs to be reconnected once to receive trash events.

There is no setting for this — it follows what actually happened to the money. See Sales Receipt vs. Invoice.

A void is permanent: QuickBooks has no way to un-void an Invoice. A cancelled order shows as a voided Invoice in QuickBooks with a total of zero.

A refund is decided differently: it always posts as its own document — a Refund Receipt where the order posted as a Sales Receipt, a Credit Memo where it posted as an Invoice — because a refund means money went back.

Where TruSync doesn’t reverse an order yet

Some cases don’t reach QuickBooks automatically today. Record these in QuickBooks yourself, and check them when you reconcile.

Amazon refunds and returns

Amazon doesn’t tell TruSync when an order is refunded or returned, so TruSync looks for refunds itself: about every 15 minutes it checks the refunds Amazon has posted to your seller account, and for each one it creates a Credit Memo against the original Invoice, for the amount refunded. The Credit Memo is recorded against the same customer as the Invoice and dated the day TruSync records it.

TruSync only creates Credit Memos for refunds Amazon posts after it began watching your store. It does not go back and credit earlier refunds, so a refund from before that point still needs a Credit Memo entered in QuickBooks by hand if you want one. TruSync also doesn’t credit a refund for an order it never synced, because there is no TruSync Invoice to credit.

If you already enter Credit Memos by hand for Amazon refunds, stop doing so for new refunds. Otherwise the same refund is credited twice, once by you and once by TruSync.

Which Wix refunds TruSync counts

On Wix, TruSync counts only money that was actually returned to the customer. A refund that is still pending, or that failed, adds nothing to the refunded amount, and a refund that has returned nothing yet is not reported. TruSync picks the refund up once it succeeds.

If TruSync can’t read an order’s refunds from Wix at that moment, it tries again later rather than treating the order as having no refund.

Refund in your store, not in your payment provider

On BigCommerce, Wix and WooCommerce, always issue a refund from your store’s order screen, never only in your payment provider. TruSync is told about a refund by your store, not by Braintree, Stripe or PayPal. If you refund a customer directly in your payment provider and don’t also record it against the order in your store, the order never changes, TruSync never hears about it, and no Refund Receipt or Credit Memo is created in QuickBooks.

This is true on all three platforms and for every payment provider, including BigCommerce Payments. What matters is where the refund is performed, not which provider processed the payment.

The money still leaves your account and still shows up in your payout, which is what makes this easy to miss: the bank side looks right while your sales figure stays too high.

TruSync does not create the missing document on its own. A refund it has not seen your store confirm could be wrong, and a wrong credit in your books is worse than a missing one.

If you already refunded in your payment provider

Do not refund the customer again. Create the matching document in QuickBooks yourself, for the amount that was refunded. Which document depends on how the order posted: a Refund Receipt if it posted as a Sales Receipt (the customer paid when they ordered), a Credit Memo against the Invoice if it posted as an Invoice. A Refund Receipt against an open Invoice would leave the Invoice standing, so check the order’s document type in QuickBooks first.

If the payout from Braintree, Stripe or PayPal is connected to TruSync, the payout’s detail page lists these refunds under Refunds with no QuickBooks document, naming the order and the amount that has no document. The notice stays until TruSync has a document for the refund. TruSync can’t see a document you enter in QuickBooks yourself, so it can remain after you have fixed your books. It appears only after the payout containing the refund has reached TruSync, only for orders TruSync synced, and only on BigCommerce, Wix and WooCommerce stores. It is not shown if Automatically sync refunds to QuickBooks is off in Sync Settings. It is also not shown when TruSync can’t confirm the order and the payout are in the same currency, which includes older orders synced before TruSync recorded each order’s currency; for those, check your payouts for refunds you made in your payment provider.

What a refund or cancellation does to your inventory

Whether stock comes back depends on your Refund Restock Policy in Sync Settings, and refunds and cancellations are not treated the same.

So the setting does not change what a cancellation restocks: a cancelled order’s units go back under every setting. The policy only decides what a refund does, because with a refund it isn’t knowable whether the goods are coming back.

If the order was partly refunded first, TruSync puts back only the units that refund didn’t already return, so refund 1 of 3 units with restocking on, then cancel, and 2 go back. A partial refund that didn’t restock, which is every refund under the default policy, leaves all 3 to go back. Two cases put nothing back: an order that was fully refunded before it was cancelled, and an older refund, recorded before TruSync itemised the units each refund returned, that did put stock back (only possible under Always restock on refund/cancel). Check the item’s quantity in QuickBooks in those cases.

When a refund does restock, TruSync takes the units from the refund itself, as your store reports them for each refunded line. It does not use the original order’s quantity, so a refund for part of a line never restocks the whole order.

A refunded line that reports no units at all (only an amount) still puts one unit back, because QuickBooks won’t accept a zero-quantity line with an amount. If a refund like that shows a unit coming back that you didn’t receive, check the item’s quantity in QuickBooks.

A refund restocks only when the store sends item detail with it. If the store reports just a refund amount with no item detail, TruSync posts a single “Refund” line and no stock changes, even under Always restock on refund/cancel.

A cancellation is different because the whole order is being reversed, so the original order’s units are the right count. See the restock FAQ below.

Restocking happens in QuickBooks, on items it tracks as inventory. Items that aren’t tracked as inventory have no quantity to restock.

When TruSync voids an Invoice for a cancellation, QuickBooks puts the Invoice’s stock back itself, bundle components included, so TruSync makes no separate inventory adjustment. When TruSync instead creates a Credit Memo or Refund Receipt for a cancellation, it puts the cancelled units back on that document. The result is the same either way, under every Refund Restock Policy, including Never restock (apart from the earlier-refund exception above).

Why a paid or settled order’s original transaction stays untouched

When the money moved, the original transaction is treated as complete and permanent. TruSync creates a separate Refund Receipt or Credit Memo dated on the cancellation or refund date, rather than voiding or modifying the original.

This matches how your payment processor actually handles it: a credit card batch includes both the original charge and the refund as two separate transactions, even when they net to zero. Voiding the original would leave QuickBooks out of step with what your processor’s batch actually shows.

Why an unpaid, unsettled, unrefunded Invoice is voided instead

This applies when the Invoice was never paid, never settled, and had no earlier refund. If it was partly refunded first, a void would reverse that part twice, so TruSync credits what is left instead.

When no money moved, a Credit Memo would record the reversal of a payment that never happened. The Invoice and its Credit Memo would then sit in QuickBooks as a pair that matches nothing in any payout, and you would have to clear it by hand. Voiding the Invoice removes it from your sales and receivables while keeping the document and its number as a trail.

Partial refunds

A partial refund — an item that didn’t ship, a shipping cost refund, or a general adjustment — creates the same document type a full refund would on that store, for the partial amount: a Refund Receipt where the order posted as a Sales Receipt, a Credit Memo where it posted as an Invoice.

The cases above under Where TruSync doesn’t reverse an order yet apply to partial refunds too — a Walmart partial refund doesn’t reach QuickBooks any more than a full one does. A partial Amazon refund does: it creates a Credit Memo for that amount.

When a cancelled order arrives with no amounts

Occasionally a marketplace reports a cancelled order with no prices at all. TruSync then credits what it recorded when it created the original document: each item keeps the amount it was billed at, and whatever those items don’t account for (shipping, for example) is credited on a Refund item. On a marketplace that collects sales tax itself (Amazon, eBay), tax is not part of that remainder: see Sales tax on marketplace refunds and cancellations. If the items’ billed amounts add up to more than the refund because of a discount, TruSync credits them less a discount line, so the Credit Memo matches what was refunded.

If TruSync still can’t work out an amount, it stops. The order appears under your order exceptions with a message saying so, and you are sent an alert. This is TruSync declining on purpose to write a credit worth nothing, so your books are not left with a Credit Memo that credits nothing against an open Invoice. Nothing was sent to QuickBooks, so nothing there needs undoing. The exception does have a Retry button, but pressing it re-runs the same cancellation and it stops for the same reason — there is nothing on your side to change first. Contact support with the order number and we will post it.

The Refund item and your income account

When TruSync needs a Refund item and your QuickBooks file doesn’t have one, it creates it. It posts to the Income account you chose under Accounts in Sync Settings. If you haven’t chosen one, TruSync uses the income account your products already post to, but only when most of them agree. It never picks an account from a list.

If TruSync can’t tell, or the account you chose isn’t an active Income account (an asset account, for example), the refund or cancellation is not posted: TruSync stops rather than guess an account, and nothing is written to QuickBooks, so nothing there is wrong. It appears under your order exceptions with a message saying why, and you are sent an alert. Set the Income account under Accounts in Sync Settings, then press Retry on the exception in Order Exceptions. TruSync re-runs the cancellation or refund itself, and never touches the original document. Retry works once: the exception closes as soon as the re-run is sent, so check Sync History for the order to see whether it posted. If it failed again for the same reason, a fresh exception appears; if it failed for a passing reason, such as QuickBooks being briefly unavailable, Sync History shows the failure and no new exception is raised — contact support with the order number in that case. The same rule applies to the discount line TruSync adds when it has to credit a discounted order from the original sale. An inactive Refund item in QuickBooks isn’t used; reactivate it, or rename it, so TruSync can create a fresh one.

Sales tax on marketplace refunds and cancellations

On marketplaces that collect and remit sales tax themselves as a facilitator (Amazon and eBay), TruSync records the cancellations and refunds it does create with zero tax. The marketplace collected that tax from the buyer, remitted it, and refunded it to the buyer, so you never held it and have no tax credit to reverse.

This matches how those orders post in the first place, with tax at zero. It also sets the amount: a cancellation of a whole order is credited for the total the original Invoice carries in QuickBooks, which leaves the marketplace’s tax out. It is not credited for what the buyer paid, which includes that tax, so a cancelled Amazon order that cost the buyer 14.95 against an Invoice of 13.94 is credited 13.94. For stores where you collect your own sales tax, the refunded tax is still reversed.

How this shows up in Bank Deposits

Both sides of the transaction — the original charge and the refund — appear as separate line items in the relevant Bank Deposit, so the deposit matches what actually settles to your bank account.

FAQ

Will a cancelled order’s original transaction disappear from QuickBooks? It depends on whether the money moved. If the order was paid or settled, the original Sales Receipt or Invoice stays exactly as it was and the cancellation posts as a separate Refund Receipt or Credit Memo alongside it. If an Invoice was never paid and never settled, and nothing was refunded on it earlier, TruSync voids it: the Invoice and its number stay in QuickBooks, marked void with a total of zero, and no credit document is created. If it was partly refunded first, TruSync creates a Credit Memo for what is left instead of voiding it.

What does a cancellation on my Amazon or eBay store create in QuickBooks? On both, normally a voided Invoice and no credit document — a cancelled marketplace order was never settled, so there is no payment to reverse. If the order does appear in a settlement, or QuickBooks shows a payment on the Invoice, or TruSync can’t tell, it creates a Credit Memo instead. On eBay, a refund eBay issues for a return creates a Credit Memo against the original Invoice for the amount refunded.

A Credit Memo is recorded against the same customer as the original invoice, dated on the cancellation.

I moved a WooCommerce order to the trash. Does TruSync reverse it in QuickBooks? Only if the order had already synced and was not paid. TruSync reverses it once, the same way as a cancellation, and trashing it again later doesn’t reverse it twice. A paid order is left alone, because trash is often just tidying up: it shows as Skipped in Sync History, and you set it to Cancelled if you want it reversed. If you restore a reversed order, TruSync does not post the sale again by itself: press Re-sync on the order’s Success row in Sync History to replace the original document and its reversal with a fresh one, or record the sale by hand if your books are closed for that date.

A cancelled Amazon order shows as a voided Invoice with no Credit Memo. Is that right? Yes. The order was cancelled before it shipped and never settled, so no money moved and there is nothing to credit. TruSync voided the Invoice, which removed the sale from your books while keeping the document and its number. If you’d expected a Credit Memo, check that the order isn’t in an Amazon settlement; if it is, TruSync would have created a Credit Memo instead.

I refunded an Amazon order that had already shipped. What does TruSync create in QuickBooks? A Credit Memo against the original Invoice, for the amount Amazon refunded. TruSync checks for new Amazon refunds about every 15 minutes, so it can take a little while to appear, and it only appears once Amazon has posted the refund to your seller account. A partial refund credits that amount only, and the same refund is never credited twice. See Amazon refunds and returns.

I refunded an Amazon order and no Credit Memo appeared in QuickBooks. Why? Check three things. The refund may be from before TruSync began watching your store, which TruSync never goes back for; enter that Credit Memo by hand. The order may never have been synced by TruSync, so there is no Invoice of ours to credit. Or Automatically sync refunds to QuickBooks may be off in Sync Settings. Walmart returns are a separate case and don’t reach QuickBooks yet. See Where TruSync doesn’t reverse an order yet.

I refunded a customer in Braintree (or Stripe, or PayPal) and nothing happened in QuickBooks. Why? TruSync hears about refunds from your store, not from your payment provider. A refund issued only in the provider leaves the order in BigCommerce, WooCommerce or Wix unchanged, so TruSync is never told and no reversing document is created. Do not refund the customer again. Create the matching document in QuickBooks yourself: a Refund Receipt if the order posted as a Sales Receipt, a Credit Memo against the Invoice if it posted as an Invoice. Next time, refund from your store’s order screen. See Refund in your store, not in your payment provider.

Where do I refund a customer so TruSync records it? On BigCommerce, Wix and WooCommerce, from your store’s order screen, not from Braintree, Stripe or PayPal. That is true whichever payment provider you use, BigCommerce Payments included.

What does “Refunds with no QuickBooks document” on a payout mean? The payout includes a refund that was paid out by your payment provider, but TruSync has no Refund Receipt or Credit Memo for that order, because the refund wasn’t made from your store. The message names the order and the amount. Do not refund the customer again; create a Refund Receipt (order posted as a Sales Receipt) or a Credit Memo against the Invoice (order posted as an Invoice) in QuickBooks yourself. TruSync never creates it for you, and the notice stays until TruSync has a document for the refund.

Does a full refund and a cancellation get treated the same way? Not always — on some stores one reaches QuickBooks and the other doesn’t (Walmart returns, for example), so check Where TruSync doesn’t reverse an order yet first. Where both do, a refund posts a reversing document — a Refund Receipt where the order posted as a Sales Receipt, a Credit Memo where it posted as an Invoice — while a cancellation of an unpaid, unsettled Invoice voids it instead. For inventory, no — a cancellation restocks whatever the policy is (except after a full refund of the same order, or an older restocking refund; see What a refund or cancellation does to your inventory), while a refund restocks only under Always restock on refund/cancel, and when it does it uses the units the refund reports, not the original order’s quantity.

Why do I see two line items in my Bank Deposit for one cancelled order? That’s expected — the charge and the refund are two separate transactions in your processor’s batch, and both need to appear for the deposit to reconcile correctly.

Does an Amazon or eBay refund reverse sales tax in QuickBooks? No. Amazon and eBay collect, remit and refund the sales tax themselves, so where TruSync records a refund or cancellation it carries zero tax, the same as the original order. On eBay the Credit Memo for a refund is for the amount eBay refunded, with no tax line.

When a cancelled order restocks, how many units come back? All of the units the original order took out, less any units an earlier refund of the same order already returned. This applies to cancellations only, not refunds, and it is the same whether TruSync voided the Invoice or created a Credit Memo. Whatever your Refund Restock Policy is, if the marketplace reports a cancelled line with no quantity, TruSync uses the quantity from the original transaction instead of assuming one unit — so a cancelled order of 2 puts 2 back, not 1. The credited amount doesn’t change. If the original quantity isn’t available, TruSync falls back to one unit.

I refunded money without taking any stock back. Does that change my inventory? Not under the default Restock on cancellations only policy: a refund doesn’t restock, only a cancellation does. Under Always restock on refund/cancel, a refund that comes with item detail from your store puts back the units that refund reports, which is not the order’s original quantity. If a refunded line reports no units, only an amount, one unit still goes back. A refund the store reports as an amount only, with no item detail, posts as a single “Refund” line and changes no stock. Under Never restock, no refund changes stock.

If I refund part of an order, does TruSync restock the whole order? No. Under Always restock on refund/cancel, a refund restocks the units that refund reports for each line (one, if a line reports an amount but no units), never the whole order’s quantity. The original order’s quantity, less what earlier refunds returned, is used for cancellations, not refunds.

A cancellation or refund failed with a QuickBooks Error. How do I get it posted? If the message says TruSync couldn’t tell which income account to use, or that the Income account you chose isn’t usable, nothing was posted to QuickBooks and nothing in QuickBooks is wrong. Choose an active Income account under Accounts in Sync Settings, then press Retry on the exception in Order Exceptions, which re-runs the cancellation or refund. See Cancellations and refunds.

A cancellation didn’t post and the message says TruSync could not work out what to credit. Is something wrong in my books? No. The order arrived without prices, and TruSync’s record of the original sale wasn’t enough to rebuild them, so it stopped rather than write a Credit Memo worth nothing. Nothing was sent to QuickBooks and QuickBooks did not reject anything. There is a Retry button on the exception, but it will stop for the same reason, because nothing on your side changes what TruSync is missing. Contact support with the order number and we will post it.