Refunds, cancellations and what moves the money
What each action on a purchase does to your client's access, and what it does to the money. Those are two separate things, and only one of them happens inside Protocol.
Every action on a purchase answers two questions, and they have different answers.
- What happens to access? Whether the client still has the plans, the sessions, and whatever else the product grants.
- What happens to the money? Whether anybody’s bank balance changes.
Protocol is the record of both. It moves only the first. No action on a purchase charges a card, returns money to a card, or tells Stripe anything. Money moves where you took it: in your Stripe dashboard, your bank, or your hand.
This page is worth reading once before you press Refund on a real client.
The whole thing in one table
| Action | What happens to access | What happens to the money |
|---|---|---|
| Mark as paid | Granted straight away. Linked plans take effect and session credits become usable | Recorded as paid in Protocol. Nothing is charged |
| Pause | Held. The client keeps the purchase but not the access, and cannot lift it themselves | Nothing moves |
| Resume | Given back from where it left off | Nothing moves |
| Cancel order | Ends. The client no longer holds the purchase | Nothing moves. Nothing is sent to Stripe |
| Refund | Ends, and the order reads REFUNDED | Nothing moves. You issue the refund yourself |
| Record a payment on an installment | Unchanged | That installment is marked paid in Protocol’s ledger. No card is charged |
The actions, one at a time
Mark as paid
Use it when the money has arrived and the purchase is still sitting unconfirmed. It moves the purchase to ACTIVE, which is the moment access is granted: the plans attached to the purchase take effect, session credits become usable, and the confirmation email goes out. An invoice is recorded as paid.
It records that you were paid. It does not collect anything. Take the payment first, then mark it.
Pause and Resume
Pause parks a purchase without ending it, for a client who is travelling or injured. Access is held until you resume. You can set a date for it to come back on its own, or leave that empty and resume it by hand.
Resume gives access back and shifts the dates forward by the time it spent paused, so a client does not lose the days they were away.
Neither one touches money. A paused installment plan is also left out of the overdue chasing, which is covered in Selling in installments.
Cancel order
Cancelling ends the order. The client stops holding it, and the product becomes available to buy or claim again.
Nothing is refunded, and nothing is sent to Stripe. Cancel is the right action when a client stops and keeps what they already paid for, or when you are going to handle the money separately.
Plans that were already copied into the client’s account are not deleted by cancelling. If you want them out of the client’s way, end them on the client’s record. Pausing is the action that actually holds a plan, which is why it is the better choice for a break you expect to end.
Refund
This is the one to be careful with.
Refund marks the order as refunded in Protocol. It does not return your client’s money. There is no card involved on this side: the order ends the same way cancelling ends it, and it shows as REFUNDED in your history and in your shop overview.
Returning the money is yours to do, wherever you took it:
- Paid by card through your own Stripe account: refund it in your Stripe dashboard.
- Paid by transfer: send it back.
- Paid in cash: hand it back.
The order that keeps the record straight is money first, then mark it here. Protocol will not warn you if you do only half of it, because it has no way to know what your bank did.
Record a payment on an installment
Each row of an installment plan has a Record payment action. It writes what the client paid against that row: full amount, or a partial one that leaves the row open for the balance.
It is a ledger entry. It does not charge a card, and it does not ask the client for anything. Take the payment however you normally take it, then record it so the plan’s progress and its invoice stay right.
What Protocol does and does not do with Stripe
Worth being plain about, because the word Stripe appears in a few places in the shop.
Protocol stores your Stripe keys and can confirm they work. That is where it stops. It does not charge cards, take subscription payments, or issue refunds on your behalf. There is no automated checkout: a client cannot pay you inside Protocol.
What that means day to day:
- You take the money yourself, by card link, transfer, cash, or whatever you already use.
- You record the sale in the shop as a purchase, usually with the External payment fulfillment method.
- Protocol then does the parts it is good at: access, expiry, session credits, installment schedules, invoices, reminders and the overview.
So the shop is your book of record and your access control. Collection stays with you.
The one thing a client can help themselves to is a Free product in the store inside your mobile app: they tap once and the purchase is recorded for you. Everything with a price on it is recorded by you. See Products.
After the fact
Whatever you did, the record stays. A cancelled or refunded order keeps its invoices, its amounts and its tax snapshot, so your history and your accountant’s view of it do not change. Void an invoice rather than deleting it, for the same reason: see Purchases & invoices.