Payment Reversals

Payment reversals return the payment for a transaction to the buyer. This typically happens after a chargeback or having lost a dispute with a customer (for example, a lost PayPal® claim). In this situation, it is common to reverse the actions that the transaction triggered when the system originally received it.

WHMCS 8.3 and later includes support for disputes for Stripe credit card transactions and some PayPal® transactions at Billing > Disputes.

Supported Gateways

WHMCS can automatically perform payment reversals for the following supported payment gateways when they notify WHMCS of a reversal:

Reversal Actions

Reversals can include the following actions:

Change Invoice Status — Sets the invoice to the Collections status. This status can help you track invoices that have a problematic payment history (for example, invoices that have received chargebacks, disputes, sold or unpaid debts, or other lost business).
Change Due Dates — Reverts Next Due Date increments for the services in an invoice. This marks the item as due or, if the date is in the past, overdue, which will trigger an automated suspension until repayment.

Reversal actions can vary depending on the services for an invoice:

Invoice Item	Reversal Actions
Hosting Services and Hosting Service Addons	The system automatically reverts changes to the Next Due Date increment. If you have enabled automated suspensions, the system will suspend the service immediately (for automated payment reversals) or suspend the service the next time the system cron runs (for manual payment reversals). This also applies to prorated hosting services and service addons.
Upgrades	WHMCS will immediately suspend any services associated with the upgrade.
Add Funds Invoices	WHMCS will immediately remove the credit from the client account. This can result in a negative credit balance.
Mass Payment Invoices	WHMCS will add a reversed transaction to each invoice and change all invoices’ statuses to Collections.
Domains	Payment reversals do not trigger any actions. You must perform any desired actions manually.
Custom Invoice Items	Payment reversals do not trigger any actions. You must perform any desired actions manually.

Automated Payment Reversals

To enable automated payment reversals, go to Configuration () > System Settings > Automation Settings.

Make certain that you check both Change Invoice Status and Change Due Dates.

Manual Payment Reversals

You can perform a manual payment reversal when you add a refund to an invoice. To do this, check Reverse Payment. The system will reverse the invoice status and Next Due Date value appropriately.

The Refund tab for an invoice

For more information, see Invoices.
In WHMCS 8.3 and higher, when you perform a manual refund on an applicable transaction, you may also reverse any affiliate commissions. For more information, see Reversing Affiliate Commission.

Email Notifications

When the system receives a payment reversal notification, WHMCS will send an email notification to all admins whose role receives account emails.

For more information, see Administrator Roles.

Last modified: June 14, 2024