Available to Accounting Basic and Accounting Premium
How to Refund a Customer Payment Made Through Stripe
Every Stripe refund — whether full or partial — creates a Customer Refund transaction, so your books always show refund activity clearly instead of relying on a voided payment to represent it.
At this time we do not have refund functionality for payments that were not made through Stripe. See the process to refund a payment not made through Stripe below.
The Refund Liability Account
A Refund Liability account is automatically added to the chart of accounts for all Patriot Accounting customers who use modified cash or accrual basis accounting. No setup is required.
Go to the General Ledger (Reports > Accounting > Financial Reports > General Ledger) for the period between when a refund is initiated and when it settles with Stripe.
Full and Partial Stripe Refunds
You can issue a full refund on a Stripe payment directly from the accounting software. See more information in the section, How to Issue a Refund When Stripe is Used as the Original Payment Method below.
Partial refunds must be initiated in your Stripe account. If a partial refund is processed through Stripe, Patriot Accounting records the exact amount refunded and allocates it proportionally across the invoice's line items, discounts, and sales tax, so your revenue and tax accounts stay accurate.
How to Issue a Refund When Stripe is Used as the Original Payment Method
Go to Reports > Accounting > Customer Reports > Customer Payment History.
Find the Stripe payment you want to refund and click Refund at the bottom of the payment detail.
Confirm the refund. Once it's processed, the Refund button is replaced with a confirmation message showing the amount and date, for example "Refunded $50.00 on 8/17/2026." This message appears whether the refund was started in Suite or in Stripe directly.
Where You'll See Stripe Refund Activity
Refund activity appears throughout your accounting software reports:
General Ledger (Reports > Accounting > Financial Reports > General Ledger) — as Customer Refund transactions
Customer Payment History (Reports > Accounting > Customer Reports > Customer Payment History) — refunded transactions show "Refunded $X.XX on {date}," and this detail is also included in the PDF and CSV exports
Invoice Details (Accounting > Receivables > Invoices, then click an invoice number) — the Invoice Status History table shows refund initiation and settlement events
Sales Tax Report (Reports > Accounting > Customer Reports > Sales Tax) — refunds appear as negative line items that reduce net taxable sales and tax owed, in both the on-screen report and its PDF/CSV exports
Correcting a Stripe Customer Refund
If a Customer Refund was recorded incorrectly, you can void it from the General Ledger (Reports > Accounting > Financial Reports > General Ledger) to reverse the accounting without affecting the underlying Stripe refund. Read more about this on our General Ledger Report help article.
A voided entry can also be permanently deleted if needed, though deletion is blocked for reconciled transactions. See Voiding a Journal Entry for details.
If a Stripe Refund Fails
If Stripe notifies Patriot that a refund failed, the related Customer Refund journal entry is automatically voided and an email notification is sent to the account owner, so your books stay accurate and you know to follow up with your customer.
Refunding a Customer Payment Not Paid Through Stripe
If you did not use Stripe for the customer payment, you can record a refund manually with journal entries, but each step is manual:
You can either:
Void the payment and return the invoice to unpaid status
On the left side navigation, go to Reports > Accounting > Customer Reports > Customer Payment History.
Click Void Payment
Refund your customer manually
Your invoice will remain in an unpaid status.
--OR --
Make manual journal entries and keep the invoice in a paid status
For accrual basis accounting:Create a Journal Entry reversing income, sales tax, and discounts and crediting the Refund Liability account at the refund initiation
Refund your customer manually
When your payment back to the customer has settled, debit the Refund Liability account and credit the bank account.
For cash basis accounting:
Create a Journal Entry to reverse income, sales tax, and discounts
Refund your customer manually.
Create a Journal Entry to Credit the bank account at settlement.
Your invoice will remain in a paid status.