When a guest cancels their own activity in the customer portal, the booking is cancelled right away but the refund normally waits for someone on your team to process it. Automatic Refunds closes that gap: TripWorks issues the refund the moment the guest confirms the cancellation, tells the guest what happened to their money, and only sends the booking to you when a refund genuinely needs a human decision.

You'll find the setting under Setup Sell online Customer Portal, in the Cancellations & Rescheduling section. Two other settings there matter:

• Enable Activity Cancellations must be on, otherwise guests can't cancel in the portal at all. See Set up the customer portal.
• The Cancellation Window decides how close to the start time a guest can still cancel themselves. An automatic refund can only happen when the guest cancels before that cutoff, so the window is how you protect yourself from late cancellations.

What qualifies for an automatic refund

Automatic Refunds is deliberately narrow: TripWorks only moves money on its own when it can be certain the refund belongs entirely to the activity being cancelled. A cancellation qualifies when all of these are true:

• The guest is allowed to cancel online, which means they're cancelling before your Cancellation Window closes.
• The booking came directly from you, not through an online travel agency or a reseller. Bookings your team took by phone or that guests made through your own website or AI assistant count as direct.
• Every payment on the booking is a card payment taken through TripWorks, or the booking was paid entirely with gift cards.

Card payments are refunded to the card they were taken on, including a deposit and a balance charged separately. Gift-card bookings have their funds returned to the original gift card instead.

How much is refunded

An automatic refund returns everything that's still refundable on each card payment, the same as a full refund you'd issue from the trip's Payments tab. It doesn't apply a percentage or keep back a cancellation fee. If a payment was already partly refunded, only the remainder goes back, and the guest sees the exact amount. For how a Booking Fee is handled on a refund, see Refund a payment.

If you charge a fee for cancelling close to the start time, set your Cancellation Window to match. Inside that window guests can't cancel in the portal, so every late cancellation comes to you.

Whatever happens with the money, the cancellation stands. TripWorks never un-cancels a booking because a refund didn't go through, so a guest is never blocked from cancelling by a payment problem.

When TripWorks routes the refund to you instead

In these cases the guest can still cancel, but the refund is left for you to process. Nothing is refunded automatically and your alert tells you the amount to review:

• Any payment wasn't a TripWorks card payment. Cash, invoice or wire payments, an OTA or reseller booking, or a mix of a gift card and another method.
• The booking sits on a trip with other activities still active. Payments belong to the whole trip, so TripWorks won't guess how much of them covered the one cancelled activity.
• The trip included a product, such as merchandise. Cancelling the activity doesn't bring the item back, so the money stays put. Add-ons on the activity don't count as products and are refunded with it.
• The refund is over 5,000 in your currency (for example, $5,000). Large refunds always get a human decision.
• Your account has already auto-refunded a lot in the last 24 hours: more than 25 refunds, or more than 20,000 in your currency in total. This is a safety ceiling, not a limit on how much you can refund yourself.
• Your available Refund Reserve doesn't cover it. See Refund a payment for how the Refund Reserve works.

If nothing was ever paid on the booking, such as a fully comped activity, there's nothing to refund and the guest simply sees the cancellation confirmed.

Turn on Automatic Refunds

1. Ask TripWorks support to turn on the Auto Refund on Portal Cancellations beta for your account, if it isn't on already.
2. Go to Setup Sell online Customer Portal.
3. Confirm Enable Activity Cancellations is on and the Cancellation Window is the number of hours you want.
4. Turn on Enable Automatic Refunds, directly beneath the cancellation window.
5. Select Save.

The change applies to cancellations made from that point on. Cancellations already recorded are not revisited.

What guests see after they cancel

Guests cancel from Cancel Activity in the portal's Actions panel. As soon as they confirm, the result appears as a note on the cancelled activity, so nobody has to email you to find out where their money went.

The note is written in plain, calm language and names your company, plus your phone number when one is set, so the guest knows who to call:

• Refunded in full. The guest is told a full refund has been issued to the card ending in those last four digits, and that it typically takes 5 to 10 business days to appear.
• Refunded in part. The same message with the exact amount. This happens when part of a payment had already been refunded.
• Gift card returned. The amount has been returned to the gift card, named by its last four digits when only one gift card was used.
• You'll handle it. The guest is asked to contact you directly with any questions about their refund. This is the mixed or non-card case.
• Cancelled, refund still being handled. A neutral note pointing the guest to your company. Guests never see the words "error" or "failed."

If the guest rebooks a new date

When Allow Activity Rescheduling is on, the note also offers a Rebook button. What happens next depends on whether money already went back:

• The refund was issued (to a card or a gift card). The new booking is a fresh purchase, so the guest has 10 minutes to pay for it. If they don't pay in time, the new spot is released, the booking returns to cancelled, and their refund stands. Because this needs a way to pay, the Rebook button only appears when Enable Balance Payments is also on; otherwise the guest contacts you to rebook.
• The refund is still with you. The portal tells the guest that the new booking is a separate purchase and that their original refund is still being handled by your company, so an in-progress refund never feels like a double charge.

How you find out, and what to do

You already get an alert when a guest cancels their own booking. With Automatic Refunds on, that same Customer Self Cancellation alert carries one extra line telling you where the money stands:

• Green: "Refund of $X issued automatically." Nothing to do. The refund is recorded on the trip like any other refund.
• Amber: "Refund of $X needs your review." Open the trip from the alert and issue the refund yourself. See Refund a payment.

To receive it, the alert has to be switched on for you. Open your user under Setup Your team and, in the notification settings, turn on Customer Self Cancellation by email, SMS, or in-app.

Every outcome is written to the trip's audit log with the amount and the result, so you can always reconstruct what was refunded, when, and whether it went out automatically.

Examples

• Refund a kayak tour cancelled two days out. A guest paid $180 by card at checkout. Your Cancellation Window is 24 hours, and they cancel in the portal 48 hours before the start time. TripWorks refunds $180 to the card, the guest sees that a full refund has been issued, and your alert arrives green. Nobody on your team touches it.
• Handle a group that paid half by card and half by cheque. The office took a $400 card deposit and a $400 cheque for the balance. When the organiser cancels in the portal, the booking cancels, but because one payment wasn't a card payment TripWorks refunds nothing automatically. The guest is asked to contact you, and your alert arrives amber for $800 so you can settle both halves the way you want to.
• Protect a late-cancellation fee at a museum tour. You keep half the ticket price for cancellations within 48 hours. Set the Cancellation Window to 48 hours: guests who cancel earlier get an automatic full refund, and anyone later has to call you, so you can apply the fee yourself.

Verify it works

• On the Customer Portal settings, Enable Automatic Refunds stays on after you save and reload.
• After a test cancellation on a card-paid direct booking, the trip's Payments tab shows a refund recorded against the original payment.
• The Customer Self Cancellation alert for that cancellation carries the green "issued automatically" line.
• Right after cancelling, the guest's portal shows the refund note on the cancelled activity.

Troubleshooting

Problem: You can't find the Enable Automatic Refunds setting. Why it happens: The setting only appears once TripWorks has turned on the Auto Refund on Portal Cancellations beta for your account. It's also grouped with your cancellation settings rather than your payment settings, so it's easy to scroll past. How to fix it: Ask TripWorks support to turn on the beta for your account, then go to Setup Sell online Customer Portal and look under Cancellations & Rescheduling, directly beneath Cancellation Window. If the Customer Portal screen is unavailable to you, ask an admin on your team to grant Manage company profile.

Problem: A guest cancelled a card booking but no refund was issued. Why it happens: Something about the booking took it out of scope: it came through an OTA or reseller, it shares a trip with another active activity, the trip included a product, or the amount ran into one of the safety ceilings. How to fix it: Open the trip from the Customer Self Cancellation alert and refund it yourself. The amber line on the alert tells you the amount that needs handling.

Problem: The guest says they were refunded but the trip doesn't show it. Why it happens: In rare cases a refund reaches the card before the record is saved to the trip. How to fix it: Don't refund a second time. TripWorks is alerted automatically and squares up the trip's record. If it still looks wrong after a day, contact TripWorks support.

Problem: A guest can't cancel at all in the portal. Why it happens: Your Cancellation Window has already closed for that activity, or Enable Activity Cancellations is off. How to fix it: Shorten the Cancellation Window if you want guests to cancel closer to the start time. Once the window has closed, cancel it for them. See Reschedule, unschedule, or cancel a booking.

Frequently asked questions

Related

• Set up the customer portal
• Using the customer portal
• Refund a payment
• Can I refund a gift card?
• Reschedule, unschedule, or cancel a booking
• How to enable beta features