Refunds, chargebacks and failed orders

Most orders go through without you ever having to think about them. This article is about the few that need you: a customer who paid but is still waiting for what they bought, one who wants their money back, and one whose bank disputes the payment. It ends with the receipt, which doubles as the invoice their accountant will ask for.

Where your orders are

Every completed sale is on the Sales page, newest first, and View opens it. Abandoned checkouts and unpaid orders never appear there. Sales has no search: to find one customer's order, search for them under Customers and open it from their Purchases tab.

When a customer paid but got nothing

Once in a while, a payment goes through but Moonbase can't deliver what was bought: a key-code product ran out of codes, say, or a product was made Inactive while the customer was at checkout. The order then waits for you on the Failed tab of the Sales page, which only appears while there is something on it.

Open the order to see why it failed, fix the cause (upload more key codes, or make the product active again), then click Retry fulfillment. Anything already delivered isn't issued twice, and the customer gets their order confirmation as soon as the order completes.

For products licensed through iLok or your own license server, the order completes and a license that can't be issued yet shows as Pending while Moonbase keeps trying for 24 hours. The License fulfillment failed alert in Email notifications tells you if it never goes through.

Refunding an order

Open the order and choose Actions > Refund.

Everything on the order is selected to begin with. From there you can:

• Refund the whole order by leaving everything selected.

• Refund some lines by unticking the ones the customer keeps.

• Refund some units of a line bought in a quantity, with the - and + buttons. A customer who bought three copies but only needed two gets one of them refunded.

Refunds are always whole lines or whole units, never a custom amount or part of one item's price. If a customer paid too much, refund the item and let them buy it again, or give them a coupon for their next purchase. A bundle is one line, so it's refunded as a whole.

Pick a Reason, and add a Comment only your team sees if you like. For part of a line, the dialog shows an Estimated refund, and Moonbase works out the exact amount, tax included, when it makes the refund. Click Refund: the customer is emailed, and the money is back on their card or account within a few days.

The 14-day window

You can refund an order yourself for 14 days after it completed. After that, you'll see "Only orders made the last 14 days can be refunded": send Moonbase support the order and the reason, and we can refund it for you.

What can't be refunded

• Failed orders, until they have been delivered.

• Disputed orders, where the money goes back through the chargeback instead (see below).

• Orders imported from another platform or sold by another store, since Moonbase never took that money.

• Lines or seats that were already refunded.

Test orders and free orders can be refunded: no money moves, but the licenses are revoked, which is handy for cleaning up after testing.

What a refund changes

• Licenses are revoked for whatever was refunded. Unless the customer has another license for the product, the app stops working at its next check. Devices activated offline keep working, because they never check in.

• Bundles: refunding a bundle revokes the licenses for every product in it.

• Subscriptions: refunding some seats lowers the subscription's seat count, and the next renewal charges for the seats that are left. Refunding a subscription payment's whole line cancels the subscription.

• Customer groups: a refund doesn't take the customer out of any group they joined, which matters if a group gives access to something like beta downloads.

• Fees: the refunded amount comes off your payout, but the fees on the original sale aren't returned. See Fees & Costs.

Chargebacks

Sometimes a buyer goes to their bank instead of to you, and the bank opens a chargeback (a dispute). As the merchant of record, Moonbase handles the case for you. The order gets a Disputed pill and a Dispute card with the amount, the date, the bank's reason and the status: Ongoing, Resolved - won or Resolved - lost.

Here's what happens to the money:

• When the dispute opens, the disputed amount, the original fees on the sale and a flat dispute fee are taken from your payout.

• If the dispute is won, the amount and the original fees come back. The flat dispute fee doesn't.

• If it is lost, the amount stays debited, and the tax on the order is reversed.

You can't refund a disputed order, send evidence or settle the dispute yourself. What helps most is contacting the buyer: often they just didn't recognise the charge, which is in Moonbase's name (see Payments Overview), and they can withdraw the dispute with their bank. The Payment disputed alert in Email notifications tells you when one opens.

Receipts and invoices

When an order completes, the customer is emailed a receipt with a PDF invoice. It's a full VAT invoice, with the buyer's details (and their business name and tax ID, if given), Moonbase as the seller, prices excluding tax, each tax with its rate, and the total. So when a buyer's accountant asks for an invoice, the receipt is it. From the order you can:

• click Download receipt to get the PDF yourself, or

• choose Actions > Resend receipt to email it to the customer again.

Customers don't have a receipts page in their account, so these are the way to get them another copy.

Adding business details after a purchase

If a business checked out as a consumer and sends you its VAT number afterwards, choose Actions > Add business details on the order, enter the business name and the tax ID for the order's billing country, and click Apply. Tax the sale shouldn't have been charged is refunded to the buyer with a corrected receipt. Your payout isn't affected. It works once per order, within 14 days, on orders that haven't been refunded or disputed.

Frequently asked questions

Can I refund part of an item, like 10 EUR of a 50 EUR plugin?
No. Refunds are by line or by seat, never a custom amount. Refund the item and let the customer buy it again, or give them a coupon for a future purchase.

The customer was refunded but can still use the product. Why?
Devices activated offline keep working, because they never check in with Moonbase. On devices activated online, the app stops working at its next license check.

A customer says they paid but never got their license.
Look on the Failed tab of the Sales page. If the order is there, fix the reason it gives and click Retry fulfillment. If the order completed but the license says Pending, it is waiting on iLok or your own license server.

Can I refund an order that is more than 14 days old?
Not yourself, but Moonbase support can. Send us the order and the reason for the refund.