How to Process a Refund

Refunds are an unavoidable part of your membership business, so it’s important that you and your team know how to process a refund in PMPro.

In this guide, we cover how to use the one-click refunds feature in Paid Memberships Pro. If your payment gateway does not yet offer refund integration for PMPro, you can use the manual refund process also covered in this guide.

Why Members Ask for a Refund

Members may request refunds for various reasons, and understanding these can help you improve member retention and satisfaction. Some of the most common reasons a member may ask you to process a refund include:

• Unmet Expectations: If the membership doesn’t live up to the value as described or just didn’t meet their expectations.
• Technical Issues: When members experience challenges accessing membership benefits, which leads to frustration and, potentially, a refund request.
• Change of Circumstances: Over time, a members might find that the membership no longer aligns with their needs due to personal or professional changes.
• Financial Reassessment: Economic changes might prompt a member to cut costs, starting with non-essential subscriptions.

By identifying these underlying causes, you can find ways to address them and hopefully reduce your overall refund rate.

Defining Your Refund Policy

Every membership site should have a clear refund policy. In this companion guide, we explain the refund policy we use for our own site here at PMPro. That guide has tips on how to set your policy, as well as how to think about refunds overall.

I’ll add that even if you clearly state that you do not offer refunds for membership, there will be people who dispute a charge via their bank or PayPal.

These are called “chargebacks” or “disputes”, and you can learn all about how they work in our post on chargebacks here.

Video: How to Process a Refund

One-Click Refunds for Stripe, PayPal, and Paystack

Paid Memberships Pro offers native support for full refunds right in your WordPress site admin. This feature simplifies the process you and your membership site managers need to follow to handle a refund case.

One-click refunds are offered in three specific places within the WordPress admin:

• On the Edit Member screen’s Memberships panel.
• On the All Orders admin list view.
• On a single Edit Order admin screen.

While you can process a refund from any of these screens, the most common situation is that you are processing a full refund for the last payment received and cancelling a user’s membership in one step. For this reason, the best way to process a refund is from the Edit Member screen as part of a membership cancellation or change.

Refund and Cancel Membership In One Step

1. Navigate to Memberships > Members in the WordPress admin.
2. Search for the member you want to refund.
3. When you locate the right member, click on their username to get to the Edit Member screen.
4. Select the Memberships panel.
5. Locate the Membership you want to cancel and click the Cancel link.
6. In the panel that appears, check the box to Refund the last payment.
7. For memberships with a recurring subscription, we recommend that you also leave the option selected to Cancel payment subscription. If you do not do this, the last order will be refunded but the member will be charged again according to the subscription setup.
8. Optionally check the box to send the member an email about this change.
9. Finally, click the Cancel Membership button to complete the process.

When the membership is cancelled, PMPro gets to work sending notifications to your connected payment gateway.

• The user’s subscription is cancelled and their last order is refunded.
• You will see a message at the top of the screen that confirms whether the refund was successful.
• You and the user receive an email about the membership cancellation (if selected) and the membership refund (always). You can customize the contents of these messages from the Memberships > Settings > Email Templates page in the WordPress admin.

Refund a Single Order

1. Navigate to Memberships > Orders in the WordPress admin.
2. Use the search form to locate the order you want to refund. You can search for an order by Transaction ID, Subscription ID, or by member profile fields like email or username.
3. Hover over the Order Code and locate the Refund link in the row actions.
4. Click Refund.
5. A window will appear asking you to confirm this (irreversible) refund.
6. After confirming, PMPro sends a message to your connected payment gateway. You will see a message at the top of the screen that confirms whether the refund was successful.

If the refund is successful, you and the user receive an email about the membership refund. You can customize the contents of this message from the Memberships > Settings > Email Templates page in the WordPress admin.

Note that refunding a single order does not cancel a member’s subscription or membership in this site. You can do this in a single step from the Edit Member screen, or you can follow up with this step after you have completed the refund from the Edit Order screen.

At this time, Paid Memberships Pro’s built-in refunds feature can only process a full refund. If you need to process a partial refund, follow the manual steps below.

Manual Refund Process

If your gateway doesn’t support one-click refunds in PMPro, or if you have an order that cannot be successfully refunded through the one-click process, follow the steps below to process a refund manually. Note: you can also use these steps to process a partial refund.

1. Locate the Member Record

If the membership is still active, you can search for the member under Memberships > Members List. I generally enter the account email address to locate the record.

If membership is cancelled (the member already cancelled their membership via the “Membership Cancel” page), the member will show up in the Members List by selecting “Old Members” from the “Show” dropdown.

2. Edit the Member

1. Click on the member’s username to get to the Edit Member screen.
2. Select the Memberships panel.
3. Locate the Membership you want to cancel and click the Cancel link.
4. For memberships with a recurring subscription, we recommend that you leave the option selected to Cancel payment subscription. If you do not do this, the member will be charged again according to the subscription setup.
5. Optionally check the box to send the member an email about this change.
6. Finally, click the Cancel Membership button to complete the process.

After clicking Cancel Membership, the membership is removed, the member is notified (if selected) and the subscription is cancelled at the gateway (if selected).

The next step is to actually process the refund at the gateway.

3. Update the Order and Refund at the Gateway

1. Locate the Order to refund. This is the last order in the Order History section of the Edit Member > Orders panel. You can also navigate to Memberships > Orders and search for the user.
2. Click the Invoice ID to view the Order.
3. Scroll to Payment Transaction ID. This is the transaction ID you will use to look up the order in your gateway.
4. Log in to your gateway account and search for the order. This varies based on the gateway used. Remember to check the “Gateway” field on the order if you are using the Add PayPal Express Add On in addition to another primary gateway, such as Stripe.
5. Process the refund at the gateway. Be careful as most gateways have multiple confirmation steps to approve a refund. You may have to click “Okay” two or three times to actually process the refund.
6. Update the Order Status. Back in your membership site’s Edit Order page, update the Order Status to Refunded. This will ensure that your Membership Sales and Revenue reports are accurate.

Concluding Thoughts on How to Process a Refund

Understanding why refunds are requested and actively working to reduce them is an unavoidable step in maintaining a successful membership platform.

By focusing on clear communication, responsive support, and member feedback, you can significantly decrease your refund rates and build a stronger, more resilient community. Remember, every interaction with a member—even those requesting refunds—is an opportunity to improve your service and retain other members.

For more detailed strategies and considerations regarding refund policies and practices, refer to our comprehensive guide on Refunds and Our 100% Money-Back Guarantee.