Refunds on Order and charge

If your store uses the Order and charge transaction mode and a refund was blocked, this article explains what works, what's blocked and why, and the workarounds for each case. To confirm which mode your store is on, check WooCommerce → Settings → Payments → WeeConnectPay → Transaction Mode. If it says Charge at checkout or Hold and charge later, this article isn't your case: see Partial refunds on Direct Charges instead.

On Order and charge, every order is created as a full Clover order where each product is its own line item (plus shipping as its own line), and that order is then paid. Refunds have to operate on those line items, and that's where Clover's API restrictions come in.

What works and what's blocked

Works: refunding whole line items at their original price, through WooCommerce's Refund button at the bottom of the order items table.

Blocked: partial refunds, meaning any amount that isn't a whole line item at its original price. You'll see the message "Due to an undocumented breaking change in the Clover API, we have temporarily disabled partial refunds. This request to refund will not be processed. Should you want to do a partial refund, you can do so through your Clover web dashboard."

Why: shipping is always its own line on the Clover order, and there is no way to proportionally split a partial amount across product lines and the shipping line through the Clover API in this flow. Combined with a Clover API change that broke partial line-item refunds, the safe behavior is to block partial amounts entirely on this mode.

How to refund a whole line item (avoid the price-edit trap)

In WooCommerce's refund interface, always set the Qty field first: the price auto-populates to the refundable amount for that quantity. Editing the price field directly without setting a quantity creates a refund the server rejects, on any transaction mode. On Order and charge, the amount must equal the original line price exactly.

If you need a partial amount anyway

You have two options:

• Process the partial refund in your Clover web dashboard. Clover's own refund tools aren't subject to this block. Note that a refund made in the Clover dashboard does not automatically reflect back into WooCommerce, so update the WooCommerce order status manually afterwards.
• Refund a full charge from the order page. In the WeeConnectPay Charges section on the order edit page, each charge has its own Refund button that refunds that charge in full.

Orders paid with a gift card plus a card

When an order was paid with two payment methods (a gift card or loyalty card plus a regular card), two Clover charges exist for one order, and refunds through WooCommerce's interface are blocked with the message "This order contains gift card or loyalty card payments. For security reasons, partial refunds are not available when multiple payment methods are used. Please use the 'Refund' button in the WeeConnectPay Charges section above to process a full refund for each transaction."

The reason: a line-item refund can't be routed unambiguously when the order has more than one charge; there's no way to know whether to debit the gift card or the real card. The resolution is exactly what the message says: use the WeeConnectPay Charges section on the order and refund the charges fully, one at a time.

"Already refunded or exchanged"

Clover tracks refund and exchange state per line item on its side. A second refund on the same line, or a refund on a line that was already exchanged, is rejected. Check in Clover which transactions already went through for that order; if a previous refund or exchange covers the line, no further refund is possible against it.

Should you switch to Direct Charges?

If partial refunds are a regular need, switching your Transaction Mode to Charge at checkout resolves this for new orders: partial refunds of any amount, any number of times, up to the original total. The change applies to new orders only; existing orders keep the flow they were placed under.

There's more than refunds to the choice, so weigh all three dimensions:

• Refunds: Direct Charges win. Partial refunds work normally there.
• Taxes: Direct Charges win. The tax forwarding modes (including Full attribution, which shows TPS and TVQ as separate named lines in Clover reporting) apply to direct charges only; Order and charge has no tax forwarding yet. See How WeeConnectPay reports your taxes to Clover.
• Clover-side line items: Order and charge wins. If you use a Clover order printer (kitchen tickets, packing slips), depend on the per-line-item view in the Clover dashboard, or want web sales attributed to your Clover inventory items, those need the line items that only Order and charge creates.

A note on Hold and charge later: it's also a direct-charge mode, so partial refunds work there too, but Full attribution tax reporting requires immediate capture, so Hold and charge later payments use the Automatic tax behavior instead.

To switch: WooCommerce → Settings → Payments → WeeConnectPay → Transaction Mode, pick Charge at checkout, save. You can switch back at any time; every order remembers the flow it was placed under. If you depend on Clover-side line items, staying on Order and charge is the right call: the choice is about fit, not hierarchy. Unsure? Email support@weeconnectpay.com and we'll help you weigh it for your store.