This article outlines the various refund processes based on how bookings were made and the circumstances of cancellation.
General Refund Principles
Refunds are generally processed back to the same form the student paid — membership credit, package credit, or card payment.
When a booking is refunded as part of a cancellation or removal (the studio deletes or auto-cancels a class, a student cancels within the window, or you use Remove with refund), a card payment is credited to the student's Groovio wallet. It does not go straight back to the card. To return the money to the original card instead, either refund the wallet balance back to the original payment method (see "Refund Wallet Balance to Original Payment Method") or refund directly from the student's Transaction History (see "Refund Transaction to Card Instead of Wallet").
When you refund from the student's Transaction History (the U-turn icon), you choose the destination in the Send this refund to window: Student Wallet or Original Payment Method.
A Transaction History refund always returns the whole transaction. There is no amount field. To refund only part of a payment (for example, one week of a course), add that amount to the student's wallet instead: Wallet Balance > Add Money, using Account Credit Adjustment as the payment method.
A payment made with membership or package credit is refunded as that same credit.
When a class booked with a membership or package is cancelled within the cancellation window, the activity log can show "$0 refunded". This is expected — the credit is returned to the membership or package rather than money being refunded. To check a membership credit came back, open the student's Memberships tab and click Billing Cycle Credit Use.
Alternative to refunding: reassign the booking's payment method
You do not always have to refund and rebook. If a booking was charged to the wrong source — for example, charged to a card when it should have used the student's membership or package credit — you can reassign the booking's payment method from the booking's action buttons, switching it to the correct credit instead of processing a refund.
Warning — avoid a double credit: if you refund a booking and separately correct it (for example, refund to the wallet and then also reassign the payment method), the student can end up with a double credit. If this happens, manually reduce the leftover wallet credit to $0 to keep the student's balance correct.
Refunds for Entire Course Cancellations
If a student cancels an entire course within the studio’s cancellation period, they will receive a refund.
The refund will be processed back to the original payment method:
Membership credit: Refunded as membership credit.
Package credit: Refunded as package credit.
Card payment: Refunded to the Groovio account wallet. To refund the amount back to the student’s card, the administrator must: locate the original transaction under the student’s profile, process the refund from there, and ensure the wallet balance is zero. (This is a two-step process.)
If a student cancels an entire course after the cancellation period, they will not receive any refund.
Refunds for Single Class Cancellations within a Course
Make-ups apply to courses (term classes) only. If makeups are enabled on the course and a student cancels a single class, they will receive a makeup credit (package of one), as long as they cancel before the make-up cutoff.
The cutoff is the course's Cancellation Time Frame (set between 1 and 168 hours before class). A student who cancels inside that time frame (for example, 2 hours before class when the time frame is 24 hours) is removed from the class but gets no make-up. If no Cancellation Time Frame is set, a make-up is issued for any cancellation made before the class starts.
No monetary refund is issued in this case.
Refunds for Drop-in Spots in a Single Course Class
If a student cancels a drop-in spot within the studio's cancellation period, they will receive a refund.
The refund will be processed back to the original payment method:
Membership credit: Refunded as membership credit.
Package credit: Refunded as package credit.
Card payment: Refunded to the Groovio account wallet, requiring the two-step process (described above) to refund back to the student’s card.
If a student cancels a drop-in spot after the cancellation period, they will not receive any refund.
Refunds Due to Studio Cancellation
If the studio cancels an entire course or a drop-in class, students will receive a full refund, even if it is within the cancellation period. (A course can't be deleted while students are still booked into it. Remove them first with Remove from entire course, as described below.)
The refund will be processed back to the original payment method following the same procedures outlined above.
If the studio cancels only one class within a course, no refund is issued.
Deleting a drop-in class date refunds booked students automatically, in the way they paid. Don't also add credits or wallet money by hand, or the student will be compensated twice.
Remove with refund is available when removing a student from a drop-in class.
For a course (term), use Remove from entire course. Before the course has started you can choose Remove without refund or Remove with refund. With refund, card payments go to the student's wallet and membership/package credits are returned. Once the course has started, removing a student from the entire course does not issue a refund. If you want to compensate them, add credit or wallet money manually.
Bookings paid with a payment plan, and invited guests, can only be removed without refund.
Refunds Due to Studio Edits of Course Term Dates
If the studio adds a week to the term of a course, the studio will not receive anything extra.
If the studio removes a week from the term of a course:
Students will not receive any refund unless the removed week had drop-in bookings.
In that case, students booked for that individual drop-in class will receive a refund following the standard drop-in refund process.
Removing and Refunding Students from Past Classes
You can now remove and refund a student from a class that has already taken place, in exactly the same way you would for an upcoming class. Previously this was only possible for upcoming classes.
Open the past class from your Schedule (or the student's Classes tab), remove the student, and choose whether to issue a refund as part of removing them. The refund follows the same rules as any other refund — it's returned to the original payment method, with card payments credited to the student's Groovio wallet (see the two-step process above to return the funds to the card).
This applies to drop-in bookings. A refund through Remove from entire course is only available before the course has started.
For further assistance, please contact Groovio Support.