Process a refund in five steps

Refunds happen often. Fexl Lite makes them predictable: the same five steps, in the same order, every time. Learn the flow once and every scenario — card-back, partial return, defect, store credit — fits the same shape.

Updated 4 May 2026·For v1.6.100·7 min read 🐞 #62 · v1.6.100

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Shortcut

Press Ctrl + R from the POS screen to open the return wizard directly. Saves a click on every refund.

Overview

The wizard’s five steps are:

1. Invoice — find the original sale.
2. Products — pick which lines to return, and how many of each.
3. Condition — for every returned unit, decide where it goes: back to stock, defect bin, or dispose.
4. Defects — for any defect units, route them to the supplier or hold for inspection.
5. Confirm — pick the refund method (cash / card / store credit) and post the entry.

Each step exists for a reason — short-cutting one creates accounting gaps. Read this overview once, then use the rest of this page as reference.

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What posts to the books

At step 5, Fexl Lite writes a single journal entry: revenue contra (5040) for the refunded amount, sales tax adjustment if VAT applied, and a debit to the chosen settlement account (1010 cash sub-account, the original card terminal, or the customer’s store-credit liability 2100). Inventory moves are written separately per disposition in step 3.

1

Find the original invoice

Three ways in:

• Scan the barcode on the customer’s receipt.
• Search by invoice number (INV-2026-04829).
• Filter by customer name if they don’t have the receipt.

The latest issued version surfaces — even if the invoice was cancelled and re-issued, you’ll see the live one.

2

Pick the lines to return

Tick the checkbox next to each line. Edit the quantity if the return is partial — for serialised items, the picker lets you select specific IMEIs from the original sale.

Bonus items (BOGO, free gifts) appear with a BONUS chip on the line. Returning a bonus reverses both sides of the promotion.

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Partial returns are allowed; partial cancellations are not

If you need to cancel an entire invoice, use Cancel Invoice from the invoice detail page instead. Cancelling reverses the journal entries and restocks every line in one shot. The return wizard is for partial refunds where the rest of the sale stands.

3

Set the condition of each item

For every returning unit, pick one of three dispositions:

• Resaleable — the item goes back to regular stock at its original cost.
• Defect — the item goes to Defect Inventory, not regular stock. You’ll route it to a supplier or dispose of it from there.
• Dispose — the item is written off immediately. Cost moves to the disposal expense account.

The disposition counts must sum to the line’s return quantity. The wizard blocks step 4 until they do.

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Bonus items use a different cost

When a refunded line is part of a BOGO or free-gift promotion, Fexl Lite splits the disposition cost: bonus units use account 5020 (bonus expense) at the bonus-allocated cost, non-bonus units use 5010 (cost of goods) at the FIFO unit cost. You don’t have to do anything — the wizard tags each unit automatically. 🐞 #40 · v1.6.100 made this split correct on the defect-egress write.

4

Route any defects

If you marked anything as Defect in step 3, this step appears. For each defect line, choose:

• With supplier — the unit ships back for credit or replacement. Tracked in the supplier’s RMA queue.
• Pending inspection — your tech checks it first. Stays in Defect Inventory with status pending.
• Resolved (dispose) — write it off now.

If nothing was flagged as a defect, the wizard skips this step.

5

Choose refund method and confirm

Four settlement choices, depending on what the customer is owed and what they owe you:

• Cash — opens the cash drawer; the amount comes out of the active shift’s open sub-account. Capped at invoice.amount_paid since v1.6.105 — a return can never pay back more cash than the customer paid in.
• Card — refunds to the original card terminal. The terminal log is the source of truth — if the network call fails, the refund stays in pending and you retry from the invoice detail page.
• Deduct from debt — applies the refund against any outstanding balance the customer owes on the original (or other open) invoices. The default since v1.6.105 when the customer carries debt; an allocation hint shows how the refund will split between cash, debt, and credit before you confirm.
• Store credit — adds to the customer’s running balance. They can spend it next visit or withdraw it at any time.

Review the total. Press F9 to confirm. The receipt prints automatically on the active receipt printer.

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Debt-deduction is the default for partially-paid invoices

Returning items on a partially-paid invoice now defaults the refund type to Deduct from debt when the customer has an outstanding balance. Pre-v1.6.105 the Deduct from debt button was permanently hidden because the customer-fetch endpoint didn’t return the computed balance — cashiers had only cash and store-credit paths, both of which paid out money without touching the open debt and left the books short on every such return. See Process refunds with credit for the full debt-deduction path.

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Cannot be undone

Once confirmed, the refund is written to the journal and inventory is moved. To correct a mistake, issue a fresh invoice for the difference — don’t try to “uncancel” the refund.

Watch the full flow

A 3:42 walkthrough of every step on a real Iraq-locale store:

refund-walkthrough.mp4 · 3:42

Troubleshooting

Wizard won’t open

Cause — Returns are disabled in Settings. Fix — Settings → Sales → Returns → toggle on.

Step 4 is stuck on a defect line

Cause — No supplier RMA queue configured for that line’s supplier. Fix — Add a supplier in Suppliers → Setup, or pick “Resolved (dispose)” instead.

Card refund hangs in pending

Cause — The card terminal disconnected mid-call. Fix — Retry from the invoice detail page. If it still fails, settle as cash and reconcile manually.

Receipt prints Serial Number: 1689 instead of the IMEI

Cause — Pre-v1.6.100 regression where the backend enricher leaked the database primary key as if it were a serial number. 🐞 #62 · v1.6.100 Fix — Update to v1.6.100 or later. The fix is server-side, no client action needed.

API call (advanced)

If you’re scripting refunds against the API:

curl -X POST https://api.fexl.io/v1/refunds \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FEXL_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "invoice_id": "INV-2026-04829",
    "lines":      [{ "id": 12, "qty": 2, "condition": "resaleable" }],
    "method":     "card",
    "operator":   "ahmed.k"
  }'

The endpoint is idempotent — sending the same invoice_id + lines payload twice produces one refund and a 409 on the retry.

Related

• Defect Inventory — what happens after step 3
• Returns settings — disable returns, set time-window limits, approval thresholds
• Cancel an invoice — when partial isn’t enough
• Release notes — v1.6.100 — the four refund-related fixes shipped in this version