Refunds, reminders, and receipts

After an invoice goes out, four follow-up actions live on its detail page: issuing a refund, sending a reminder, sending a receipt, and cancelling the invoice. This guide walks through each one — what it does, what the family receives, and the side effects to watch for.

All four start the same way: go to Billing → Tuition, open the invoice, and use the Actions panel on the right. Which buttons appear depends on the invoice's status. For how invoices get created in the first place, see Create and send invoices; for logging offline payments, see Record a cash or check payment.

Step 1 — Send a payment reminder

A reminder is a nudge email to the family about an unpaid invoice. You don't have to pick the wording or the tone — MarkTrack chooses the right reminder type automatically based on the invoice's due date:

• Upcoming — the due date is still in the future.
• Due — the due date is today.
• Overdue — past due, but less than 30 days late.
• Final notice — 30 or more days past due.

1. Open an unpaid invoice (status Sent, Partial, or Overdue).
2. Click Send Reminder at the top of the page.
3. You'll see "Reminder sent." MarkTrack picks the correct reminder type for you and emails the family right away.

Step 2 — Send a receipt

A receipt confirms a completed payment. The Send Receipt button appears in the Actions panel only once an invoice is fully Paid.

1. Open a paid invoice.
2. In the Actions panel, click Send Receipt.
3. MarkTrack emails the receipt for the most recent successful payment to the family, and confirms with "Receipt sent to [family email]."

Receipts are sent on demand — recording a manual cash or check payment does not auto-send one, so use this button when a family asks for proof of payment. If there's no successful payment on file, MarkTrack tells you and sends nothing.

Step 3 — Issue a refund

A refund returns money to a family for a payment they already made. Refunds are processed through Stripe and go back to the original payment method the family used — so you can only refund a real online card or bank payment.

1. Open a Paid invoice (or one with a refundable payment).
2. In the Actions panel, click Issue Refund — or, on the Payments tab, click the Refund button next to a specific payment.
3. The Process Refund window opens, showing Available to Refund — what is still refundable on that payment, which after an earlier partial refund is the remainder, not the original amount.
4. Choose a Refund Type:
   • Full Refund — returns the entire payment.
   • Partial Refund — reveals a Refund Amount box where you enter any amount up to the Available to Refund figure. You can refund the rest later; a payment stays refundable while it still holds money.
5. Optionally enter a Reason. It is recorded with the refund, alongside who issued it, so the history is answerable later.
6. Click Process Refund. You'll see "Refund of $… processed successfully."

What happens when you process a refund:

• Stripe sends the money back to the family's original card or bank account. The family always receives the full refunded amount.
• Stripe does not return its processing fee for the original payment, and that fee is deducted from your school's Stripe balance — the family is never charged for it.
• The family is automatically emailed a refund notification — you don't send it separately.
• The invoice's status is recalculated. A full refund of the only payment moves it to Refunded; a partial refund moves it back to Partial with the remaining paid amount.
• On the Payments tab, the payment is tagged Refunded or Partially Refunded.
• The invoice's Amount Due goes back up by the amount you returned — the money is no longer covering the bill. That figure is not a debt the family owes: MarkTrack stops collecting against it. Reminders, overdue texts, payment plans and automatic card retries are all switched off for a refunded balance, and the family's Pay button disappears on both the web portal and the mobile app.

Step 4 — Cancel an invoice

Cancelling voids an invoice the family should no longer pay — a duplicate, a charge sent in error, or a student who withdrew. The Cancel Invoice button is in the Actions panel for an invoice that has not collected any money. Once a payment has been recorded — including a cash or check one — cancelling is refused ("Refund the payments first"), and it is unavailable on a refunded invoice too.

1. Open the invoice.
2. In the Actions panel, click Cancel Invoice.
3. Confirm when asked "Are you sure you want to cancel this invoice?"

What cancelling does:

• Sets the invoice status to Cancelled. The family can no longer pay it, and it drops out of your outstanding totals.
• Stops any payment plan on the invoice. If the invoice had an active, paused, or pending payment plan, that plan is cancelled and its upcoming scheduled installments are skipped — so a parent's card won't get charged for an invoice you just voided.
• Installments that were already paid stay paid — they reflect real money that moved. Cancelling doesn't refund anything on its own.
• Order matters, and only one order works. If money was collected you cannot cancel the invoice at all until it is refunded, and once it is fully refunded the Cancel button is gone. So a refunded invoice stays on Refunded rather than Cancelled — that is the end state, and nothing further is owed on it.

Stuck on a refund or a stuck invoice? Contact support, or see more in Billing & Tuition.