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Payments & payouts 4 min readLast updated May 12, 2026

How do I refund a deposit?

There are three ways to refund a customer’s deposit from the Studio. Which one to use depends on whether the booking has happened, who initiated the cancellation, and whether the deposit was marked refundable when the service was created.

KM

Kojo Mensah

Support & community · BookWithMee

1. Refund from the booking detail page

This is the simplest path. Open the booking from your Bookings tab in the Studio, scroll to the Payment section, and tap Issue refund. You’ll see one of two screens:

  • If the deposit is fully refundable, the button shows the full deposit amount.
  • If you’ve enabled a “deposit forfeited within 24 hrs” policy and the cancellation is inside that window, you’ll see a partial-refund option with the policy quoted at the customer.
Heads up: Stripe doesn’t refund their processing fee on refunds. If the deposit was $40, you’ll send $40 back to the customer — but the $1.46 Stripe fee stays with Stripe, not you.

2. Refund during a cancellation

When you cancel a booking from the calendar (right-click → Cancel, or open the side panel and tap Cancel), you’ll get a refund toggle inside the cancellation flow. This is the fastest path when you’re the one cancelling.

3. Partial refund via Stripe directly

For unusual situations — refunding $30 of a $40 deposit, for instance — open the Stripe dashboard from Settings → Stripe. The transaction will be linked to the BookWithMee booking ID for your records.

What the customer sees

Refunds usually appear in the customer’s account within 5–10 business days, depending on their bank. They’ll also get an automatic refund-confirmation email from BookWithMee the moment you issue it.

Pro tip: If you want to refund a deposit but keep a soft record on the client profile, leave a note in the client’s Internal notes field — “Refunded $40 deposit out of goodwill, May 12.” Future-you will thank past-you.

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