How to Refund a Manual (Cash / Cheque) Amenity Booking
How refunding a manually-paid amenity booking works: URBI posts the correction to the books while staff return the cash, cheque, or e-transfer outside the platform.
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Refunding a booking that was paid manually works differently from refunding a card booking, because there's no card payment for URBI to reverse. This guide covers what actually happens and the steps to do it.
Who can use it: staff, board members, or PMs with the refunds permission on the property.
What's different about a manual refund
On a card booking, refunding sends money back to the resident's card through Stripe. On a manual booking, there's nothing for URBI to send: you collected cash, a cheque, or an e-transfer outside the platform, so you also have to return it outside the platform. What URBI does is correct the books: it posts a reversing journal entry so the accounting reflects that the money is no longer expected to be kept, and it records who authorized the refund and why.
Steps
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Open the booking's Payment & Refunds tab. From the booking drawer, either refund a single price line with its Refund button, or use Refund entire purchase at the bottom of the tab to refund everything at once.
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Read the manual-refund notice. The confirmation dialog shows a warning: "Collected manually, return it manually." with the exact method and reference this booking was paid with, for example "This booking was paid by cheque (ref CHQ-1042). URBI posts the correction journal entry, but the money has to be returned outside URBI."
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Enter a reason. A reason is required for every refund, manual or card, for example "Cheque returned by the bank, resident cancelled."
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Confirm. Clicking Refund $X.XX posts the correction. No Stripe call is made and no money moves through URBI; the correction only updates the books.
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Return the money to the resident yourself. Hand back the cash, void or reissue the cheque, or send the e-transfer back, outside of URBI, using whatever process your property normally uses.
What gets recorded
The refund posts a reversing journal entry linked back to the original booking (nothing is deleted, so the full history stays visible), and the action is logged with who performed it and why. This is the same accounting-integrity guarantee a card refund gets; only the money-movement step happens outside the platform.
What can't be refunded through this flow
The Void payment option is separate and only applies before a payment has been recorded as collected. Once a booking shows as Paid, you refund it rather than void it.