Cancelling an order, and refunding one

Cancelling and refunding get talked about as one action. They are not. You cancel the order. The refund is what happens next, and it is not yours to press.

What you can cancel, and when

A paid order can be cancelled right up until the courier takes it. Once the parcel has been collected and the order reads Shipped, cancelling is gone. The goods are moving, and getting them back is a return rather than a cancellation.

Two other things stop it. A payment that has not gone through has nothing to cancel. And an order under dispute is blocked while the buyer's bank reviews the charge, because the money cannot be sent back twice.

Cancelling is also the shop owner's job. A staff member you have added can view and fulfil orders, but the cancel action is not theirs.

How to cancel

Open Orders, then the order itself. The cancel action sits on the order and not on any list, tucked behind the more actions button in the top corner. Open that and there is one item in it, Cancel order. If the menu is not there at all, either the order is past the point of cancelling or you are not the shop owner.

The dialog is blunt about what it is about to do, and it is worth reading rather than clicking past. It says it will cancel the order and issue a full refund, and that it cannot be undone. All three of those are true.

You will be asked for a Reason for cancellation, and it is required. The order will not cancel on an empty reason. Write something a person would understand six weeks later, because it is kept and shown on the cancelled order next to who cancelled it. "Out of stock, offered a swap, buyer declined" is worth typing. "Cancel" is not.

Then Confirm Cancel. Dismiss backs out and changes nothing.

The Cancel Order dialog with an empty Reason for cancellation field

If the order cannot be cancelled you get told why rather than being left guessing: already shipped, or held by a dispute.

The refund is automatic, and read only

This is the part worth reading twice. There is no refund button for you. The refund is raised against the payment when the order is cancelled, which is what the cancel dialog meant by issuing a full refund, and its progress comes back from the payment provider on its own.

What you see is a status, and only that:

Refund pending. Raised, not finished.
Refunded. Done, money back with the buyer.
Refund needs action, Refund failed or Refund cancelled. Something went wrong on the payment side. These are the ones to contact support about, because nothing you can press in the app will move them.

You cannot retry it, speed it up, or refund a different amount. That is deliberate. A refund moves real money out of a real payment, so the app does not hand a seller a button that fires one.

Where to see cancellations

Two places, for two reasons.

The Cancelled tab on Orders is the ordinary list, for finding one order among the rest.

Cancelled Orders is the fuller view, and the one to use when you are chasing refunds. It shows the order number, the date, the customer, Cancelled By, the reason, Refund Status and the total, and you can search it by order number, name or email. Cancelled By is the column people forget: buyers cancel their own orders too, and this is how you tell your cancellation from theirs without opening each one.

The Cancelled Orders list, showing the Cancelled By and Refund Status columns

What it does to your money

Nothing is taken from you, because nothing had been released to you.

Payment on an order is held under Berkedai Protected until the order is delivered, then settled. A cancelled order never reaches delivery, so it never settles. Its settlement is simply marked cancelled and no money moves to your balance. There is no clawback later, because there was no payout to claw back.

Start your store at berkedai.com