> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.rafflex.io/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.rafflex.io/essential-settings/wallet-and-withdrawals/cancelling-and-refunding-orders.md).

# Cancelling and Refunding Orders

How cancelling an order affects tickets, instant wins, site credit and your card or PayPal account, and the choices you make along the way.

***

Cancelling a completed order is a deliberate action with a couple of choices attached, not a one-click refund. When you cancel an order you decide, separately:

* whether to give the customer their money back as **site credit**, and
* whether to take back any [instant win](/create-your-first-raffle/add-instant-wins.md) prizes from the order that were paid as site credit.

Putting real money back on a customer's card or PayPal account is a separate job that you do inside your payment provider. Take it step by step and you will always know exactly where the money has gone.

{% hint style="danger" %}
**Cancelling an order cannot be undone.** It deletes all of the order's tickets and resets any instant wins on it. Make sure you have the full picture before you confirm.
{% endhint %}

***

### Before You Start

Ask yourself two questions first:

1. **How does the customer want their money back?** As site credit to spend on your site, or as a real refund to their card or PayPal account? Agree this with them if you can.
2. **Did they win anything on this order?** Open the order and look through the order notes for lines starting **Instant Win!**. These show the ticket number and the prize.

Knowing the answers makes the two tick boxes in the next section easy to get right.

***

### How to Cancel an Order

{% stepper %}
{% step %}

#### Open the order

1. In the **admin panel**, find the **Competitions** group in the left-hand menu and click **Orders**.
2. Find the order. You can search by order number, or by name using the small search box under **Full Name**.
3. Click **View** at the end of the order's row.

For a tour of everything on the order page, see [Orders](/managing-your-site/orders.md).
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

#### Click Cancel Order

Click the red **Cancel Order** button at the top of the page.

The button only appears on orders with the status **complete**. If you cannot see it, the order is pending, failed, already cancelled or already refunded, so there is nothing to cancel.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

#### Read the confirmation box

A box opens with the heading **Cancel Order #1234?** (with your order number) and this warning:

> This action will cancel the order, delete all tickets, and reset any instant wins. This cannot be undone.

Below it are two tick boxes. Read the next section before you change either of them.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

#### Choose your options and confirm

Tick or untick the boxes to match what you decided, then click **Confirm**.

You will see a green **Order Canceled** message confirming what was done, for example how much was added to site credit and whether instant win credits were withdrawn or kept.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

#### Refund real money if needed

If the customer should get their money back on their card or PayPal account instead of site credit, log in to Cashflows or PayPal and issue the refund there. See [Card and PayPal refunds are separate](#card-and-paypal-refunds-are-separate) below.
{% endstep %}
{% endstepper %}

***

### The Two Tick Boxes

#### 1. Add the order value to the customer's site credit

> Add £20.00 to the customer's site credit

This box is **ticked by default**. The amount shown is everything the customer paid for this order:

* **Card or PayPal orders**: the amount they paid.
* **Wallet orders**: the site credit they spent.
* **Partial orders** (part site credit, part card): both parts added together. For example, if they paid £8 from their wallet and £12 by card, the box offers £20.

What each choice does:

* **Ticked**: the amount is added to the customer's wallet as site credit straight away. They can spend it on future entries. It appears in their wallet history as **Refund for canceled order #1234**.
* **Unticked**: no site credit is added at all.

{% hint style="warning" %}
**Do not refund the same money twice.** If you are going to refund the customer's card or PayPal account yourself, **untick** this box. Otherwise the customer gets the money back as site credit **and** on their card.
{% endhint %}

#### 2. Remove site credit winnings if any

> Remove site credit winnings if any

This box is **unticked by default**. It only matters if the order contained winning instant win tickets whose prize was paid to the customer as **site credit**.

* **Ticked**: that site credit is taken back out of the customer's wallet, because the order, and therefore the win, is being undone. It appears in their wallet history as **Reversal of instant win for canceled order #1234**.
* **Unticked**: the customer keeps any site credit they won, even though the order is cancelled.

Instant win prizes that are not site credit (for example a physical prize, or a cash prize you pay out yourself) are not affected by this box. Arrange anything to do with those prizes with the customer directly.

{% hint style="info" %}
These two boxes are independent. You can refund the order to credit without removing winnings, remove winnings without refunding the order, do both, or do neither. Decide what is fair for the situation before you confirm.
{% endhint %}

***

### If the Customer Has Already Spent Their Winnings

There is one situation that stops a cancellation in its tracks. If you tick **Remove site credit winnings if any** but the customer has already spent some of that credit, so their wallet balance is now lower than the amount to take back, the cancellation does not go through and **nothing is changed**.

You will see an **Insufficient Balance** message showing how much credit is available and how much would need to be removed, with a prompt to untick **Remove site credit winnings if any** to continue.

In plain terms, you cannot take back money the customer no longer has. Your options are:

1. **Untick the box** and let the customer keep the winnings, then cancel the order.
2. **Sort the balance out another way first**, then come back and cancel.

***

### What Happens When You Confirm

Once the cancellation goes through, the platform:

* **Deletes all of the order's tickets**, so they no longer appear in the customer's account, on the entry list, or in any draw.
* **Resets every instant win on the order**, so those prizes become available to be won again by other customers.
* **Removes any** [**leaderboard**](/additional-settings/leaderboards.md) **points** awarded for instant wins on the order, if you use leaderboards.
* **Adds the site credit** if you left the first box ticked.
* **Takes back site credit winnings** if you ticked the second box.
* **Changes the order's status to canceled.**
* **Adds a note to the order** recording exactly what was decided: how much site credit was refunded (or that none was), whether instant win credits were withdrawn or kept, and, for orders paid in full by card or PayPal, a reminder that a manual refund may be required.

{% hint style="info" %}
The customer is **not** emailed automatically when you cancel an order. Let them know yourself what has happened and where their money has gone.
{% endhint %}

***

### Card and PayPal Refunds Are Separate

This is the most important thing to understand. The tick boxes only move **site credit** around inside Rafflex. Cancelling an order does **not** send real money back to a card or PayPal account.

If the order was paid by card (Cashflows), PayPal, or partly by card, and you want to give the customer their actual money back:

1. Cancel the order in Rafflex, with **Add ... to the customer's site credit** **unticked**.
2. Log in to your Cashflows or PayPal account.
3. Find the payment and issue the refund there.

To help you remember, on orders paid in full by card or PayPal the cancellation note ends with a reminder that a manual refund may be required. Partial orders do not get this reminder, so take extra care with those (see the hint below).

{% hint style="info" %}
**Partial orders.** If the customer paid partly with site credit and partly by card, you may want to refund the card part in Cashflows and give the wallet part back as site credit. Cancelling with the box ticked always adds **both** parts as site credit, so in that case untick it, refund the card part in Cashflows, and then add the wallet part back to the customer's balance yourself with **Add Site Credit**. See [how to add site credit to a customer](/additional-settings/site-credit-and-wallets.md#add-or-remove-site-credit-for-a-customer).
{% endhint %}

So cancelling an order and refunding the real payment are two different jobs. Always decide up front whether you are giving the money back as **site credit**, as a **real card or PayPal refund**, or a mix of the two.

***

### Payments Confirmed After a Competition Has Ended

Sometimes a customer's payment is only confirmed after the competition they were buying has closed. This can happen if they took a long time at their bank or PayPal. RaffleX never issues tickets for a competition once it has ended, so these orders are handled for you automatically. There is nothing for you to cancel.

* **Card payments.** If every competition in the order had ended, the whole order is refunded to the customer's site credit and marked **refunded**. If only some had ended, the customer gets their tickets for the competitions that are still open, and the value of the ended ones goes back to their site credit.
* **PayPal payments.** The whole order is refunded to the customer's site credit and marked **refunded**, even if only some of the competitions in it had ended. No tickets are issued, so the customer can use the credit to enter again.
* **Site credit payments.** No credit is taken for the ended competitions, so the customer's balance is left as it should be.
* **Free entries.** No tickets are issued for the ended competition. Nothing was paid, so there is nothing to refund.

In each case a note is added to the order explaining that tickets were withheld because the competition had already ended when payment was confirmed. The customer's wallet history also shows the refund with the same reason.

{% hint style="info" %}
These automatic refunds go to **site credit**. If a customer would rather have their money back on their card or PayPal, refund them inside your payment provider as described above, and remember to adjust their site credit so they are not refunded twice.
{% endhint %}

A similar automatic refund happens if a competition sells out in the moment a customer is paying. See [When a Competition Sells Out Mid Purchase](/instant-win-games/instant-win-games/sold-out-during-checkout-refunds.md).

***

### What You Will Not Have to Worry About

* **Deleted customer accounts.** If the customer's account has since been deleted, there is no wallet to credit, so the site credit refund is simply skipped and the cancellation still completes. The order note records that the credit refund was skipped because the account was deleted.
* **Knowing what happened later.** Every cancellation writes a note onto the order spelling out exactly what was decided. You always have a record, even months later.

{% hint style="success" %}
As long as you read the two tick boxes before confirming and remember that real card and PayPal money is refunded separately inside your payment provider, cancelling an order is straightforward and fully traceable.
{% endhint %}

***

### Related Pages

{% content-ref url="/pages/sab6ApZeLwj7vOrDOrDt" %}
[Orders](/managing-your-site/orders.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="/pages/BcZ3EpDxIjeZXRcgQ2ec" %}
[Wallet & Withdrawals](/essential-settings/wallet-and-withdrawals.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="/pages/A6zcvCpoT316o0qQciut" %}
[Site Credit & Wallets](/additional-settings/site-credit-and-wallets.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}