Payment Reversals

This page describes a feature available in WHMCS 7.2 and higher.

What are Payment Reversals?

Payment reversals return the payment for a transaction to the buyer. This typically happens after a chargeback or having lost a dispute with a customer (for example, a lost PayPal claim). In this situation, it is common to reverse the actions that the transaction triggered when it was originally received. The Payment Reversals feature in WHMCS automates this for you.

WHMCS 8.3 and higher includes support for disputes for Stripe (credit card only) and some PayPal® transactions at Billing > Disputes.
For more information on working with disputes in WHMCS 8.2 and earlier, see Transactions.

Supported Gateways

WHMCS can automatically perform payment reversals for the following supported payment gateways when they notify WHMCS of a reversal:

Reversal Actions

Reversals can include the following actions:

Change Invoice Status — This action sets the invoice to the Collections status. This status can help you track invoices that have a problematic payment history (for example, invoices that have received chargebacks, disputes, sold or unpaid debts, or other lost business).
Change Due Dates — This action reverts Next Due Date increments for the products and services in an invoice. This marks the item as due or, in cases where the date is in the past, overdue, which will trigger an automated suspension until repayment.

Enabling Automated Payment Reversals

To enable automated payment reversals, go to Configuration () > System Settings > Automation Settings or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > Automation Settings.

Make certain that you check both Change Invoice Status and Change Due Dates.

Email Notifications

When a payment reversal notification is received, WHMCS will send an email notification to all admins whose role group receives Account Emails. For more information, see Managing Administrator Roles.

Making a Manual Payment Reversal

A manual payment reversal can be performed when adding a refund to an invoice. To do this, check Reverse Payment when making the refund. The invoice status and next due dates will be reversed as appropriate.

In WHMCS 8.3 and higher, when you perform a manual refund on an applicable transaction, you may also reverse any affiliate commissions. For more information, see Invoicing and Affiliates.

Reversal Actions for Given Items

Reversal actions can vary depending on the products and services for an invoice:

Hosting and Hosting Addons Invoice

Any hosting and hosting addons that are part of the invoice for the reversed transaction will have their next due dates automatically reverted. If the payment reversal occurs as part of the cron tasks, automatic suspension, if enabled, will occur next. If the reversal is standalone, any potential suspension will run with the next scheduled automatic suspension.

Domain Items: You must manage domain items manually. Payment reversals do not trigger any automatic actions for domains.

Upgrade Invoice

WHMCS will immediately suspend any services associated with the upgrade.

Add Funds Invoice

WHMCS will immediately remove the credit from the client account. This could result in a negative credit balance.

Mass Payment Invoice

A reversed transaction will apply to each paid invoice and those invoices will go to the Collections status.

Prorated Hosting and Hosting Addons: The next due date of the items on the invoice will be set to the previous due date.; If the payment reversal occurs as part of the cron tasks and automatic suspensions are enabled, suspension may occur.; If the reversal is standalone, any potential suspend will run when the automatic suspension tasks is next scheduled.

Custom Items

Nothing can occur with custom invoice items. There is no relationship to use in WHMCS.

Documentation