How to Handle Refunds and Reversals

Refunds are the part of an affiliate program nobody sets up in advance and everybody meets in month two. The plugin handles most of it, but one case needs you.

What the plugin does automatically

Everything below happens without any setting to turn on, in both the free and Pro versions.

What you do in WooCommerce	What happens to the commission
Refund the whole order	Every row on the order flips to Refunded
Refund one line item	That row’s amount is reduced and the refund is recorded
Cancel the order	Every row flips to Cancelled
Mark the order Failed	Every row flips to Cancelled
Move the order back to Processing	Rows return to Pending

Step 1: Refund the order

Refund in WooCommerce exactly as you normally would. There is no affiliate step, and no separate screen to visit.

The plugin listens for the refund and updates the commissions itself.

Step 2: Read what happened

Go to DevDiggers Plugins → Affiliates → Commissions and find the order.

Use the status links above the table to jump straight to Refunded.

Step 3: Understand full against partial

The two cases behave differently, and the difference is worth knowing before you refund anything.

• A full refund sets the WooCommerce order status to Refunded. Every commission on that order moves to Refunded and stops counting as money owed.
• A partial refund leaves the order status alone. The plugin instead recalculates the refunded line, subtracts the commission on the refunded amount, and stores that figure in the row’s refund column.

So a partial refund does not cancel a commission. It shrinks it, and the row stays payable at the smaller amount.

Step 4: Check whether it was already paid

This is the case the plugin will not solve for you.

A commission sitting at Pending payment or Paid is skipped by the status change. It keeps its status and its amount, whatever happens to the order afterwards.

That is deliberate. Once a commission is inside a payout you have committed to, silently rewriting it would leave your payout records disagreeing with your own records.

Caution

A refund on an order whose commission is already paid does not recover the money. You have to deduct it from the affiliate’s next payout yourself.

Step 5: Recover a paid commission

There is no reversal button, so handle it the way you would any other overpayment.

1. Note the amount from the Refunded row.
2. Tell the affiliate, before they see a smaller payout than they expected.
3. Deduct it when you create their next payout, and put the reason in the transaction reference.

The reference field is the only free-text field on a payout, so it is the only place this can be recorded.

Prevent it instead

The cheapest fix is not to pay too early. Two Pro settings exist for exactly this.

Commission Holding Period keeps a commission out of payouts until it is a set number of days old, which covers your normal return window.

Minimum Withdrawal stops tiny payouts going out constantly, which reduces how often a refund lands after payment.

Pro feature

Both fields are Pro. In the free version you create every payout yourself, so the same protection comes from waiting until commissions are past your return window before you run one.

Watch the refund trend, not the refund

One refund tells you nothing. A rising Refunded Commissions line under flat earnings tells you a partner is driving orders that do not stick.

Pro feature

The Reports screen is Pro. The free version has the same figure on the dashboard, without the period comparison.

Filter Show to one affiliate at a time to find the source. Traffic that converts and then returns costs more than traffic that never converts.

Where to go next

• Commissions for every status and filter on that screen.
• How to Pay Your Affiliates for the payout workflow this feeds.