Refunds

Refunds return money after a booking has been paid. The flow is two-step — request then approve — so refunds are never silent.

Who can refund

bookings.refund — granted to owner and admin by default. Members and managers cannot refund. Approving additionally requires being authenticated with that same permission — the signed link alone is not enough.

Requesting a refund

1. Open the booking editor (/booking/{booking}/-editor).
2. Click Refund, choose the amount and enter a reason.
3. The booking moves to RefundPending; the Financial row records refund_amount, refund_reason, refund_requested_by / refund_requested_at and status pending_refund.
4. The company owner is emailed a BookingRefundRequestedNotification containing the signed approval link. Cancelling a paid booking can also create a refund request and notifies the booker (BookingCancellationRefundRequestedNotification).

Approving a refund

The approval link is signed (signed middleware):

/bookings/{booking}/refunds/{financial}/approve?signature=...

• GET shows a confirmation page with reason and amounts; POST approves.
• ApproveBookingRefund issues the Stripe refund on the connected account (with refund_application_fee so the platform fee is returned proportionally), moves the booking through Refunding to Refunded, records refunded_amount/refunded_at and notifies the booker (BookingRefundApprovedNotification).
• A Stripe failure sets RefundFailed with refund_failed_at + refund_failure_reason and fires BookingRefundFailed — staff can retry manually.
• Partial refunds are supported: refund_amount may be below the captured total; refunded_amount tracks what was actually returned.

Late payments

A Stripe payment landing after the booking already expired or was cancelled is written to the late_payments ledger and the owner is notified (LatePaymentReceivedNotification). BOOKING_AUTO_REFUND_LATE_PAYMENTS (default true) auto-refunds it — set it to false to keep the money and reconcile manually. This is a real-money side effect.