If a guest cancels in good time, or you’ve taken more than you meant to, you can give back all or part of a card payment straight from the booking. The money goes back to the card the guest paid with, and NomNom emails them to let them know.
Refund a card payment
1. Open the booking’s payments. In NomNom Web, double-click the booking, or click it and choose Full details in the panel on the right. Then open the Card & Payments tab.
2. Click the payment. Every payment on the booking is listed with its amount, card and date. One that can still be refunded says Tap to refund on the right.
3. Choose how much. The Refund payment window shows the most you can give back as Max refund, and the amount starts at that figure. Leave it for a full refund, or type a smaller amount for a partial one.
4. Click Refund. A message confirms the amount. The payment is then labelled Refunded, or £10.00 refunded if you gave back part of it, and a red Refunded line appears under Total paid. After a partial refund you can click the payment again later to refund some or all of the rest.
In NomNom Web: double-click the booking → Card & Payments → click the payment. In the phone app: tap the booking → Card & Payments → tap the payment.
What your guest receives
If the booking has the guest’s email address, they’re sent a Refund Issued email showing the amount and the last four digits of the card it went back to. It tells them refunds typically take 5 to 10 business days to appear on their statement, depending on their bank — worth repeating if they ring to ask where it is.
Refunds made in Stripe
Refunding from NomNom is still the simplest: the booking updates straight away and the guest gets the refund email. You can refund a payment in your Stripe dashboard instead, and once NomNom support has switched this on for your account, the refund shows on the booking’s Card & Payments tab too. The guest isn’t sent the Refund Issued email for a refund made in Stripe. If you use automatic refunds, NomNom checks Stripe for refunds already made before it refunds a deposit, so the same money isn’t given back twice.
Automatic refunds when a booking is cancelled
NomNom can refund deposits for you when a booking is cancelled. It’s off until you turn it on, in Settings → Cancellations & No-shows, under DEPOSITS & REFUNDS:
- Automatically refund deposits switches it on.
- No-refund window is how many hours before the booking a cancellation stops being refunded automatically. Leave it blank or at 0 to always refund.
Once it’s on, it applies to every cancellation — when a guest cancels from their confirmation email, and when someone on your team cancels a booking in NomNom. Whatever is left of the deposit goes back to the guest, and their cancellation email shows the amount. A cancellation inside the no-refund window isn’t refunded: the guest’s email says the restaurant will arrange any refund with them directly, and you can refund it by hand if you decide to.
Only deposits are refunded automatically — the one a guest paid when booking, or a charge you took yourself and marked as Deposit. Payments made through a payment link, charges for a final bill, no-show or cancellation, and payments you recorded as taken on your card machine or in cash are never refunded by cancelling. Refund those yourself if you need to. There’s more on these settings in Setting your cancellation and no-show policy.
Good to know
- Only admins can refund. Giving money back is limited to people with the Admin role. Staff with the Standard role can take payments but not refund them, so they’ll need to ask an admin. See Managing your team and who can access NomNom.
- Card machine and cash payments. NomNom can’t send back money you took on your own card machine or in cash. Clicking one of those opens Record refund instead: hand the money back on your card machine or from the till first, then record it here. See Recording card machine and cash payments.
- Refunding doesn’t cancel the booking. If the guest isn’t coming, cancel the booking too. An automatic refund only ever gives back what’s left of the deposit, so nothing goes back twice.
- If you see Connection problem. The refund may still have gone through. The list refreshes itself, so check the payment before you try again.