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.

Before you begin

• You need the Manage company profile permission to change customer portal settings.
• Enable Activity Cancellations must be on, otherwise guests can't cancel in the portal at all. See Set up the customer portal.
• Set a Cancellation Window you're comfortable with. It decides how close to the start time a guest can still cancel themselves, and an automatic refund only ever happens inside that window.

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 outside your no-cancel window.
• The booking came directly from you, not through an online travel agency or a reseller.
• 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. The amount is not calculated differently from a refund you'd issue by hand: your cancellation policy and your existing refund settings decide it, so a policy that returns half inside 48 hours still returns half. A payment that was already partly refunded only gives back what's still refundable.

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 you're told about it:

• 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 booking included a product, such as merchandise. Cancelling the activity doesn't bring the item back, so the money stays put.
• The refund is over $5,000, or the equivalent in your currency. 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 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 Can I refund a gift card? for how the reserve affects large refunds.

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. Go to Setup Sell online Customer Portal.
2. Confirm Enable Activity Cancellations is on and the Cancellation Window is the number of hours you want.
3. Turn on Enable Automatic Refunds, directly beneath the cancellation window.
4. 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 activity itself, so nobody has to email you to find out where their money went.

The note is written in plain, calm language and always names your company and phone number 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 usually takes 5 to 10 business days to appear.
• Refunded in part. The same message with the exact amount, which is what a partial-refund policy produces.
• Gift card returned. The amount has been returned to the gift card ending in those last four digits.
• You'll handle it. The guest is asked to contact you directly about their refund. This is the mixed or non-card case.
• Cancelled, refund still being handled. A neutral note pointing the guest to your phone number. Guests never see the words "error" or "failed."

If the guest goes on to book a new date, the portal tells them that the new booking is a separate purchase and their original refund is still being handled separately, so an in-flight 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 under Setup Your team, on your user's notification list, where Customer Self Cancellation can be sent 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

A kayak tour cancelled two days out. A guest paid $180 by card at checkout and cancels through the portal 48 hours before the start time, inside a 24-hour cancellation window. Your policy refunds in full at that distance, so TripWorks refunds $180 to the card, the guest sees "a full refund has been issued," and your alert arrives green. Nobody on your team touches it.

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'd want to.

Verify it works

• On the Customer Portal screen, 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.
• The guest's portal page shows the refund note under the cancelled activity.

Troubleshooting

Problem: You can't find the Enable Automatic Refunds setting. Why it happens: It's grouped with your cancellation settings rather than your payment settings, so it's easy to scroll past. Changing it also needs the Manage company profile permission. How to fix it: Go to Setup Sell online Customer Portal and look under Cancellations & Rescheduling, directly beneath Cancellation Window. If the whole 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, it 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 written to the trip. How to fix it: Don't refund a second time. The trip shows a notice that it needs reconciling, and TripWorks squares the record up. Check the trip's audit log to confirm the refund was issued.

Problem: A guest can't cancel at all in the portal. Why it happens: They're inside your no-cancel window, or Enable Activity Cancellations is off. How to fix it: Widen the Cancellation Window if you want guests to cancel closer to the start time. Inside the window, 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