Sometimes a gift needs to be reversed — a duplicate donation, a wrong amount, or a member's request. Here's how refunds work in Gracely today.
The short answer
Gracely does not process donation refunds from inside the app. To return money to a donor, you issue the refund directly in your payment processor (Stripe or PayPal). Gracely doesn’t pick up that refund, so the gift record needs a separate fix to keep your reports accurate.
Step 1: Refund the payment in your processor
For a Stripe donation:
Log in to your Stripe Dashboard.
Open Payments and find the donation by amount, date, or donor email.
Open the payment and choose Refund.
Confirm the amount (full or partial) and submit.
For a PayPal donation:
Log in to your PayPal account.
Open Activity and find the donation.
Open the transaction and choose Refund (or Issue a refund).
Confirm the amount and submit.
💡 Tip: Processor fees on the original gift may not be returned to you when you refund. Check your processor's current policy before refunding.
Step 2: Fix the record in Gracely
Refunds made in Stripe or PayPal don’t reach Gracely, so the gift still shows in Contributions → Giving at its full amount. Until the record is fixed, it counts in your totals, the donor’s history and their giving statement. What you can do depends on the kind of gift.
👉 Log in to Gracely to follow along.
Online and recurring gifts
Church admins can’t edit or delete online or recurring gifts. In Contributions → Giving, the ⋯ menu on these gifts offers Show donation details, which is read-only.
An online gift opens with Show donation details. It is read-only, with no Edit or Delete button.
To have a refunded online or recurring gift removed from your records, start a chat with us and tell us the donor, date and amount (and whether the refund was full or partial). We’ll fix the record for you.
⚠️ Note: Refunding one payment of a recurring gift doesn’t stop future payments. If the donor shouldn’t be charged again, choose Cancel recurring donation from the gift’s ⋯ menu.
In-person gifts
For in-person gifts (cash, check, and so on) there’s no processor involved. Open the gift’s ⋯ menu in Contributions → Giving and choose Edit donation details to correct the amount, or Delete to remove the gift.
For an in-person gift, open the ⋯ menu: ① Edit donation details ② Delete.
⚠️ Note: If the gift is in a batch that has already been deposited, it can no longer be edited. Deleting it needs accounting access, and also deletes the batch’s accounting transaction and reopens the batch.
A note on tax statements
If you refund a gift, make sure the Gracely record is corrected before you generate year-end statements, since statements reflect exactly what's recorded in Giving.
Still need help? Start a chat with us — we're happy to walk through a specific donation with you.