Returns and refunds

How a customer gets their money back: every return is anchored to the original receipt, entered at the register or in the back office, refunded in cash or back to the original card, and posted as a credit memo at end of day.

How returns work

Every return starts from the original sale (receipt) - there is no blank, unanchored return. The return flow projects the source sale's lines into an editable buffer showing the original quantity, the quantity already returned, and the remaining returnable quantity. You choose the lines and quantities to credit, a reason code, and a refund tender, and the system creates a negative Return-type POS sale, each line stamped with the source document and line it credits.

The buffer is a preview, not the final authority: on confirmation the server locks and rereads the original receipt, rejects duplicate selections, and recalculates all previously recorded returns before inserting anything - so two cashiers working from stale screens can never return the same remaining units twice.

Return sales carry a RETURN banner and a Return sale type, and they appear in the POS Sales list alongside normal sales.

Starting a return at the register

1. Press Return in the register action bar. It opens the sales picker, pre-filtered to returnable sales.
2. Pick the source sale.
3. Choose the lines and quantities to return, a reason code, and a refund tender.
4. Confirm. The return sale is created with the RETURN banner and the refund is recorded.

Starting a return from the back office

Supervisors working outside the register have two doors into the same flow:

• POS Sales list: select the source sale and run Return from Receipt (also available on the Sales Card).
• Select Sale to Return: a dedicated read-only page on the POS admin role center listing only eligible receipts - normal sales in Released or Posted status (no Open, Partially Posted, Cancelled, or existing Return documents). Select a row and choose Start Return.

Same-day returns

A sale you just completed stays Released until End of day posts it. The return picker accepts both Released and Posted source sales, so a customer can return an item the same day they bought it - you do not have to wait for the day to post. A return against a not-yet-posted sale posts its credit memo through the same End of Day run that posts the original sale, so the net effect is correct.

Refund tenders

• Cash comes out of the drawer: the refund reduces the shift's expected cash, and the drawer kicks if the tender method opens the drawer. When the requested cash refund is the return's exact final residual, the store's cash-rounding policy is applied (the same denomination rounding used on sales) and the rounding delta is recorded on the return.
• Card refunds go back to the exact original card charge. Each refund is allocated to a specific original payment line and captured card transaction; the refund currency, tender method, and per-charge remaining cap all come from that frozen source. A receipt paid with several card charges gets one refund leg per selected charge, and a leg can never exceed or silently switch away from its original charge. The return and all refund legs are committed durably before the payment provider is asked to move money, and each leg can be retried independently - a local failure can never erase money movement or resend a captured refund.
• Loyalty activity follows the frozen source sale: partial and repeated returns reverse only the newly due Points, Visit/Stamp, Cashback, or Tier delta, and earning that was already spent becomes signed return debt that later earning repays first.

If one card refund leg captures while another remains incomplete, use Refund Recovery to retry or replace only the incomplete leg. Finalize Return performs no provider call and becomes available only once every active leg has captured evidence. For the unintegrated "Card (external terminal)" tender, the refund is recorded in the POS and you complete the card refund manually on your terminal.

Credit memos at end of day

At End of Day, return sales consolidate into Sales Credit Memos in Business Central - the mirror of the sales-to-invoice path - grouped and posted with the same per-group isolation. Return groups always form their own groups and are never netted against sales. The return reason code flows onto the credit memo header, and under per-tender settlement the credit memo settles as refunds (negative amounts). See Consolidated posting and Per-tender settlement.

Permissions

Returns are supervisor and back-office work: the return flow is granted to the BAA POS - Admin permission set only. A plain cashier who taps Return gets a friendly "ask a manager" toast before anything opens, rather than a raw permission error. See Supervisor operations.

Auditing returns

The POS Returns and Refunds report (Tell Me -> POS Returns and Refunds) presents return documents, return lines, source-payment facts, refund tenders, credit-memo settlement, and exceptions - flagging cases such as a return with no lines, a refund total that does not match the payable, a manual card refund, or a posted return missing its credit-memo number. Card references are always shown masked. The full report catalog lives on Analytics and reporting.