Process a refund or exchange with Square for Retail
About returns, exchanges and unlinked refunds
Process refunds, returns and exchanges to resolve customer issues.
Refund: Give your customer their money back for a product.
Return: Give your customer their money back for a product and receive the product back for your inventory.
Exchange: Return a product and give your customer a different product in its place.
Unlinked refunds: Refunds that are not linked to an earlier payment made with your point of sale. Use unlinked refunds to issue refunds for customers without a receipt or payments processed through another payment processor or channel. You can refund specific items or a custom amount, back to a card, cash or gift card.
Before you begin
You can refund or exchange transactions from the Square Retail POS app and on your Square Dashboard. You also have the option to issue a refund to an eGift card. Note: Square does not charge load fees when you issue refunds to gift cards. Learn how to issue refund to gift cards.
When you process an exchange, the cart total will either be positive, negative or even depending on the price of the replacement item.
If the new item is more, you can collect payment with any of the standard payment methods.
If the replacement item is the same price as the returned item, you can process an even exchange.
Processing an exchange may have the following effects on your reporting.
Exchanges won’t reflect on your Square Transfer Summary or on accounting software like QuickBooks.
Your customer’s refund credit is initially drawn from your Square balance. If you don’t have a balance available in your Square account to cover the refund, we debit the remaining amount from your linked bank account.
For information about refund timing, refer to Manage customer refunds.
You have three options to issue a refund or process an exchange from your Retail POS.
Process a return or exchange for a previous transaction
From the Square Point of Sale app with retail mode enabled or from the Square Retail Point of Sale app:
- Open your Retail POS app, then tap Transactions.
- Locate the original transaction by either swiping your customer’s card or searching for the receipt number.
- Tap Return or Exchange.
- Select the item to restock or type the Amount to refund > tap Next.
- Select the item(s) to restock or tap Skip Restock > tap Next.
- You can either issue a refund or search your item library to add additional items to the cart. The cart amount will automatically adjust, calculating the difference between the original and replacement items.
- Open your Retail POS app, tap More > Customers.
- Find your customer by searching for their name.
- Scroll down to Transactions > tap the transaction to bring up the details page.
- Select Return or Exchange.
- Select the item(s) or type the Amount to refund > tap Next.
- Select item(s) to restock or tap Skip Restock > tap Next.
- Tap Refund or add additional items to update your cart and proceed through the checkout flow.
Process a refund for a previous transaction
You can only refund transactions from the Square Dashboard — exchanges cannot be processed from the Dashboard.
Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Orders & payments (or Invoices & Payments or Payments) > Orders > Transactions.
Click on the payment you’d like to refund, then click (•••) > Issue Refund.
Choose to:
Refund Items: Select items to refund, then click Refund items.
Refund Amount: Enter the amount you’d like to refund and the reason you’re refunding the payment, then click Issue Refund.
Process an unlinked refund
All of your employees will be able to initiate unlinked refunds, and it is your obligation, not Square’s, to prevent misuse of unlinked refunds and loss to you.
From the Square Point of Sale app with retail mode enabled or from the Square Retail Point of Sale app:
Open your point-of-sale app, then tap Transactions.
Tap Unlinked refund.
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Choose what to refund:
Refund items: Search your item library and add the item(s) to refund. Taxes are calculated automatically.
Custom amount: Enter the amount you wish to refund and a detailed description of the item.
Tap Next to review the refund summary.
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Choose a refund method and enter details:
Cash
Gift card: Swipe or enter the gift card number.
Card: Tap, swipe or insert the customer’s card.
Select a reason for the refund in the drop-down menu.
Tap Refund. You will see a confirmation once the refund is processed.
You can issue an unlinked refund from your Square Register, Square Terminal, Square Stand or iOS device.
Set unlinked refund limits
You can set unlinked refund limits at a Mode level. Go to Settings > Modes > Manage > Payment > Set unlinked refund limits.
View refunds and exchanges
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and click Reporting > Transactions.
- Click the All Types drop-down menu and click Refunds or Exchanges.
- Apply additional filters as needed.
- Click the transaction to view the refund reason, amount, date, time, and cashier who processed the refund.
Refunded transactions will have a yellow (←) on the transaction. To view from the Square Point of Sale or Square Retail POS apps:
- Tap Transactions.
- Locate the refund you’re interested in seeing transaction details for.
- You can view the refund reason, amount, date, time, and cashier who processed the refund.