How to refund a PayPal payment from a Zendesk ticket

To refund a PayPal payment without leaving Zendesk, install Pursewell, open the customer's ticket, find the payment in the sidebar and click Refund. Choose All that is left or Part of it, pick a reason, then click the confirm button, which states the exact amount. PayPal returns the money to how the customer paid and emails your reason to them, and Pursewell adds an internal note and the pursewell_refund tag to the ticket. Braintree payments are refunded the same way.

Before you start

• PayPal: Pursewell needs your PayPal app's client id and secret, with Transaction search turned on so it can find payments.
• Braintree: the Braintree user behind the API keys needs permission to refund and void transactions.
• Permissions: the agent must be in Who may take actions (admins by default), refunds and voids must be switched on, and amounts above the Largest refund without an admin (default 100 in the payment's currency) need an admin.

Steps

1. Open the ticket. Pursewell lists PayPal payments from the last 90 days whose payer email is one of the requester's Zendesk addresses, and their Braintree transactions.
2. Find the payment. If it isn't there, paste the 17-character PayPal transaction id from the customer's receipt, or a Braintree transaction id, into Find a payment or customer.
3. Click Refund on the payment.
4. Choose the amount. All that is left refunds what hasn't been refunded yet; Part of it takes an amount.
5. Pick a reason. The standard list is Customer request, Item not received, Item returned, Duplicate payment, Billing error, Goodwill, and Other (explain in the note); an admin can replace it with the Refund reasons setting. For PayPal, PayPal emails the reason to the customer.
6. Confirm. The button reads, for example, "Refund $24.00". Nothing is sent until you click it.

When the Refund button is blocked

What happens if the connection drops

Pursewell re-reads the payment right before sending and checks again. Refunds and voids carry PayPal's or Braintree's duplicate-protection key, so if the connection drops, Pursewell asks again with the same key and the provider answers with the first result. If the answer still can't be confirmed, the sidebar says Check before trying again: check PayPal or Braintree, then Refresh.

What lands on the ticket

If the note fails, the sidebar shows the text to paste.

What it costs

Pursewell is $49 a month for Zendesk accounts with up to 3 agents and admins (Starter), $169 a month for 4 to 11 (Team), or $25 per agent per month for 12 or more (Scale), billed monthly by Zendesk with a 14-day free trial. See the Pursewell documentation.