Recording a refund
A refund undoes part of a purchase. It is not income, and it starts from the original expense.
Last updated 15 August 2026
A refund returns money you have already spent — a returned purchase, a cancelled booking, a duplicate charge reversed.
Why a refund is not income
Income is money arriving from outside the family. A refund is not that. It is the undoing of a purchase you already recorded.
File one as income and the original expense still stands at its full value, with a matching sum now sitting on the other side. Your spending and your earnings both end the month overstated, and the two errors hide each other in the totals.
Recording one
A refund attaches to the purchase it reverses, so start from the original expense rather than from a blank form.
On mobileMoreExpensesOn desktopExpenses
Find the expense and choose Record refund — on a wide screen it is the undo arrow at the end of the row. The purchase appears at the top of the form, so you can check you have the right one before going further. Fill in the amount that came back and the date it arrived.
The money is credited to the account that paid, in that account’s currency, and the net spend recorded against that category falls by the same amount.
Record the purchase first
A refund has to attach to something. If the original expense was never entered, there is nothing to attach it to — record the purchase, then the refund against it.
Refunds for part of a purchase
You do not have to return the whole amount. Enter whatever came back, and the remainder of the expense stands as it was.
A refund cannot exceed the original purchase. If more than that arrived, something other than a refund has happened, and the difference belongs in income.