Full Refund or Partial? Choosing the Right One

When a project changes course and money has already changed hands, the kind thing and the smart thing are the same: make it right, fast. Fee-Lion lets you send back the whole amount or just a slice, straight to the card your client paid with. Picking the right one keeps your books clean and your client happy.

What each refund actually does

Both kinds reverse money you’ve already collected through Stripe, returning it to the original card. The difference is simply how much.

• Full refund returns the entire paid amount. The invoice rolls back to an unpaid state and the payment is undone in full, as if the charge never happened.
• Partial refund returns an amount you choose. The invoice stays partly paid, so the remaining balance still belongs to your client.

A heads-up that’s easy to miss: the small platform fee on the original charge isn’t part of what you’re sending back. You’re refunding what the client paid, and your Stripe balance is debited accordingly.

When to choose a full refund

Reach for the full refund when the work won’t happen, or when starting clean is simpler than splitting hairs.

• The client cancelled before you began and you collected a deposit.
• You billed the wrong client or the wrong amount and want a do-over.
• You’d rather re-invoice from scratch than reconcile a partial balance.

When a partial refund is the better call

Choose partial when most of the work landed and only a portion needs to come back. It’s the everyday tool for fair, proportional fixes.

• You delivered three of four milestones and the fourth was dropped.
• A scoped feature got cut after a deposit, but the rest of the engagement continues.
• You’re offering a goodwill credit for a delay without zeroing out the whole invoice.

Tip: If the work is genuinely shrinking rather than reversing, consider editing the estimate or invoice first so your line items still tell the true story, then refund only the difference. A refund that matches a real line item is far easier to explain at tax time.

Issue the refund

The path is the same either way; you just decide the amount on the last step.

1. Open Invoices in the left sidebar and select the paid invoice.
2. Find the payment on the invoice and choose Refund.
3. For a full refund, leave the amount as-is. For a partial, type the smaller amount you want to return.
4. Confirm. Fee-Lion sends the money back through your Stripe account and updates the invoice status automatically.

Watch the status afterward. A full refund frees the invoice to be cancelled, re-sent, or rebuilt; a partial refund leaves a live balance you can still collect with the Pay button. If you’d rather not chase a remainder, a quick edit to the invoice keeps the math honest.

One more shortcut for the speed-lovers: most payment actions are reachable from the command palette, so you can jump to an invoice without hunting through the sidebar. However you get there, a clean refund is a small moment of trust you bank for the next project.

What’s next

• Issue a refund
• Take a partial payment
• Connect Stripe to get paid
• Invoice statuses explained