Issuing refunds

When you refund a paid booking from Bookabee, the refund goes straight through Stripe to the original card the parent paid with. Funds typically appear in their account in 5–10 business days, depending on their bank.

What's refundable

• The class price the parent actually paid (post-voucher, if a voucher was applied).
• Bookabee booking fees and Stripe processing fees are non-refundable — Stripe doesn't return its fee on a refund, and our platform fee isn't refunded either.
• Add-ons purchased alongside the booking are not refunded via this flow. If you need to refund an add-on, contact the parent and arrange it separately.

The booking detail page shows "Max refundable: £X" before you start, which already excludes add-ons and any refunds you've previously issued on this booking.

Refunding without cancelling

Use the "Issue refund" button on the booking detail page when you want to refund part of the price but keep the parent's place active — for example as a goodwill gesture or after a partial issue.

1. Click "Issue refund" on the booking detail page.
2. Pick Full refund (the max) or Partial refund and enter an amount.
3. Add an optional reason (the parent sees this in the refund email).
4. Click "Issue refund". A spinner appears while we talk to Stripe.
5. Success: you see a green panel with the Stripe refund id (re_xxx). Failure: you see a red panel with the actual error from Stripe and a "Try again" button — nothing has been recorded against the booking so retrying is safe.

Refunding while cancelling

When you click "Cancel booking", the same refund form appears inline. You can choose Full / Partial / No refund. The refund (if any) is processed before the cancellation, so if Stripe rejects we don't cancel the booking and you can retry.

Partial and multiple refunds

You can refund a booking partially, then refund more later. The "Max refundable" amount tracks what you have left to refund. Once it hits £0, the Issue refund button stops accepting new refunds for that booking.

Safety on retries

If a refund takes a long time and you click "Try again" because you're not sure if it went through, Bookabee uses a per-attempt idempotency key so the retry returns the same refund instead of creating a second one. You can't accidentally double-refund a booking, even on a flaky connection.

What the parent sees

They get an email from your company explaining the refund amount, the reason (if you added one), and that funds will appear in their original payment method within 5–10 business days. Stripe also sends them an automatic refund receipt.