Orders & refunds

Every purchase a customer makes appears under Orders in your admin sidebar — what was bought, what it cost, whether the money arrived, and what to do when it didn’t.

Reading the list

Each order shows the customer, the shoot, the amount and a status:

Paid : The money arrived. The customer has their photos.

Pending : Checkout started but hasn’t completed. Usually a customer who is still on the payment page, or who closed it mid-way.

Failed : The payment was attempted and declined. The reason is shown — see below.

Abandoned : Checkout was started and never finished. Nothing was charged. These are normal and don’t need action.

Refunded : You refunded the full amount. A partly refunded order stays Paid, with the refunded amount shown alongside.

When a payment fails

We show the reason the bank or card network gave, in plain language rather than a code:

Not enough funds on the card
The card has expired
The security code was wrong
The card number was wrong
The bank declined the card without giving a reason

That last one is genuinely all the bank told us. It usually means the customer should call their bank or try a different card — there’s nothing to fix on your side, and retrying the same card normally fails the same way.

A failed payment charges nothing. The customer can try again from the same gallery.

Issuing a refund

Open the order, enter the amount to refund (and a reason, if you like), then choose Refund and confirm the amount. Refunds are for the workspace admin. You can refund:

The full amount — the remaining balance is shown as the maximum, or
Part of it — enter a smaller amount. You can refund the rest later.

The refund goes back through whichever processor took the payment (Stripe or Square), to the card that paid. How long it takes to appear is up to the customer’s bank — typically a few days, sometimes longer, and not something either of us can speed up.

On Square, the refund’s reason in your Square dashboard starts with a short reference, order: or print_line: followed by an id, and then the reason you typed. That reference is how Deliver recognises its own refund if Square reports later that it failed. Leave it as it is.

Only paid orders can be refunded. If the money never arrived there’s nothing to send back. A free order (a discount code covered it in full) took no payment, so it has no refund option.

Refund from here, not from your Stripe or Square dashboard. Deliver only knows about refunds made on this page. A refund you make directly in Stripe or Square sends the money back, but Deliver never hears about it: the order stays Paid, it doesn’t appear under Refunded, no confirmation is emailed, and your customer keeps access to the photos.

Your customer is emailed a refund confirmation with a credit note attached.

When Deliver can’t confirm a refund

Occasionally Stripe or Square doesn’t answer clearly, or answers but Deliver can’t record the refund, or the connection drops before any answer arrives. The message under the refund then says not to retry, and the refund form locks. The money may already be on its way back, so refunding again could pay the customer twice. Check the payment in your Stripe or Square dashboard first. Once you’ve checked, choose I’ve checked the payment provider — unlock refunds if there’s still something to refund.

The lock is kept on the order itself, so it stays in place if you reload the page, open the order in another tab, or another admin opens it. Cancelling a single print on that order waits for the same confirmation.

When a refund fails at Stripe or Square

Sometimes Stripe or Square accepts a refund and then reports, hours or days later, that it failed. The usual causes are a card that was closed or replaced, or not enough balance in your account. When that happens, your customer has not been paid back, even though the order shows the refund.

Deliver tells you in two places:

On the order. Open it under Orders and a red notice at the top says how much failed, at Stripe or Square, and on which date (in UTC, the same date the email gives). It also shows the processor’s refund ID. Anyone on your team who can see money sees it; your customer never does.
By email. Your workspace owner gets one email for each failed refund, with the same details and a link to the order.

Deliver does not retry the refund. Sign in to your Stripe or Square dashboard, search for the refund ID, and sort it out there: for example by refunding the customer again, or by contacting them if their card has changed. A refund you make in the dashboard is not seen by Deliver (see above), so the notice stays on the order until you tell Deliver it’s sorted.

Marking a failed refund resolved

Once you’ve sorted it out in your dashboard, select Mark resolved on the notice. Add a short note if you like, such as “refunded by bank transfer” (one line, up to 200 characters), then select Yes, mark resolved.

The notice goes away for that refund, for everyone on your team. If another refund on the same order fails, it gets its own notice.
Deliver records who marked it resolved and when, in your activity log (“Failed refund marked resolved”). The note isn’t shown there. Tobren support can see the note.
Marking it resolved doesn’t move any money or change the order. The order still shows the refund it booked.
If someone on your team already marked it resolved, nothing changes and Deliver tells you so.

Your workspace admins can mark a failed refund resolved, and so can ops managers and team members while your studio shows money to staff. Viewers can see the notice but can’t mark it resolved.

Sending a receipt again

A customer who can’t find their receipt email can have it sent again. Open the order and click Send receipt. Once a receipt has gone out, the button reads Resend receipt. The email goes to the customer on the order. You can’t choose another address. View receipt opens the same receipt on screen.

It’s available to workspace admins, for paid orders where the customer has an email address. If the order has no email, the page says so.
Sample orders in the demo workspace can be viewed but not emailed.
To stop accidents, there is a one-minute wait between sends, and a receipt can be sent at most 10 times in total. The page tells you how long to wait. That total is shared with the customer’s own Orders page, where they can ask for a copy themselves.

Group purchases

On a shoot with group purchasing turned on, one customer’s purchase unlocks the photos for everyone in the group.

If you fully refund that purchase, the rest of the group loses the photos it unlocked for them — they were riding on that order. Worth a heads-up to the group before you refund, since they’ll lose access without having done anything themselves.

What you can’t do from here

Charge a customer directly. Purchases start from the customer’s gallery. There’s no way to take a payment on someone’s behalf, deliberately — it keeps you clear of handling their card details.

Change what an order bought. If a customer bought the wrong thing, refund it and let them buy again.

Where the money actually goes

Payments go straight to your Stripe or Square account. We never hold your customers’ money and never touch their card details — see Payment setup for connecting a processor.

Your subscription to Tobren is separate and billed to you; it has nothing to do with these orders.