Despite our best technical and personal efforts, sometimes people make mistakes and we have to issue refunds of permit or license fees.
The way payments on ClearForms work, our payment processor Stripe holds payments for a few days before transferring them to your government's bank account to ensure that the credit card used is valid. As you know you can set a schedule of how frequently funds are transferred to your bank account.
We strongly encourage you to issue refunds BEFORE funds are transferred out of our payment processor to your government bank account (e.g., while they are still shown as “Pending” on ClearForms). We have found that setting a weekly payment transfer timeline allows local governments to issue any refunds needed (for example, if a constituent has paid an incorrect amount or a permit was denied after payment received) BEFORE the funds are included in your own bank accounts. Through working with our clients, they’ve had much more challenge - and incurred more administrative expenses - with delayed refunds.
How to issue a refund in ClearForms:
From the workflow dashboard, select the submission with the payment you need to refund. Then select the payment step for the Payment you wish to refund. Click the three dots (“More”) and you can issue a refund.
There are no ClearForms fees associated with refunded payments. Your bank may charge fees for refunds issued AFTER a payment is received by the bank.