Orders & refunds

Every purchase a customer makes appears under Orders in your admin sidebar — what was bought, what it cost, whether the money arrived, and what to do when it didn’t.

Reading the list

Each order shows the customer, the shoot, the amount and a status:

Paid : The money arrived. The customer has their photos.

Pending : Checkout started but hasn’t completed. Usually a customer who is still on the payment page, or who closed it mid-way.

Failed : The payment was attempted and declined. The reason is shown — see below.

Abandoned : Checkout was started and never finished. Nothing was charged. These are normal and don’t need action.

Refunded : You refunded the full amount. A partly refunded order stays Paid, with the refunded amount shown alongside.

When a payment fails

We show the reason the bank or card network gave, in plain language rather than a code:

• Not enough funds on the card
• The card has expired
• The security code was wrong
• The card number was wrong
• The bank declined the card without giving a reason

That last one is genuinely all the bank told us. It usually means the customer should call their bank or try a different card — there’s nothing to fix on your side, and retrying the same card normally fails the same way.

A failed payment charges nothing. The customer can try again from the same gallery.

Issuing a refund

Open the order and choose Refund. You can refund:

• The full amount, or
• Part of it — enter the amount

The refund goes back through whichever processor took the payment (Stripe or Square), to the card that paid. How long it takes to appear is up to the customer’s bank — typically a few days, sometimes longer, and not something either of us can speed up.

Only paid orders can be refunded. If the money never arrived there’s nothing to send back.

Your customer is emailed a refund confirmation with a credit note attached.

Refunds and photo access

A full refund also takes the photos back. The customer loses access to everything that order bought, so a full refund settles the money and the photos together — you don’t need to arrange the second part separately.

A partial refund changes nothing about access. Nothing records which individual photos a partial refund covered, so the product doesn’t guess: it would either take back photos the customer still paid for or leave ones they didn’t. If you want them to keep some and not others, refund in full and let them buy the ones they’re keeping.

A photo they also bought on another order stays theirs. Refunding one order never takes away something they paid for twice.

If they buy a refunded photo again later, it simply comes back.

Group purchases

On a shoot with group purchasing turned on, one customer’s purchase unlocks the photos for everyone in the group.

If you fully refund that purchase, the rest of the group loses the photos it unlocked for them — they were riding on that order. Worth a heads-up to the group before you refund, since they’ll lose access without having done anything themselves.

What you can’t do from here

Charge a customer directly. Purchases start from the customer’s gallery. There’s no way to take a payment on someone’s behalf, deliberately — it keeps you clear of handling their card details.

Change what an order bought. If a customer bought the wrong thing, refund it and let them buy again.

Where the money actually goes

Payments go straight to your Stripe or Square account. We never hold your customers’ money and never touch their card details — see Payment setup for connecting a processor.

Your subscription to Tobren is separate and billed to you; it has nothing to do with these orders.