How to Integrate WooCommerce Refunds to Your Store | Step-by-Step

If you own a WooCommerce store, you must know the pain of going through countless customer complaints, queries, and refund issues. While having a fast and efficient customer service works great, having a system to manage woocommerce returns is also important. 

When customers bombard you with requests, there needs to be a way to manage it all from one place without affecting any day-to-day operations. This is what we will learn in this article. We will take you through all the steps you need to know to add a product refund feature to your store. 

What is a WooCommerce Refund Manager?

By default, WooCommerce does not offer a product refund feature. This means that in order to offer refunds to your customers, you either have to add the functionality programmatically or use a WooCommerce refund manager/plugin. 

The WooCommerce refund plugin automates product refunds on your store based on your needs. You can customize the refund button and limit the feature for desired products, user roles, countries, and more. 

There are multiple refund plugins out there with varying features, prices, and capabilities. For the sake of this article, we will explore the Smart Refunds for WooCommerce plugin and the steps to integrate it in detail. 

Add WooCommerce Refunds to Your Store – 2 Ways

Below are two ways you can add the WooCommerce refund feature to your website:

1. Use a WooCommerce Refund Manager Plugin
2. Add the Refund Feature Programmatically  

Now, we will explore both methods one by one. 

Use a WooCommerce Refund Manager 

Adding a plugin to your store is quite simple and requires minimal technical knowledge. Below, we have explained the steps one by one so you can follow along without much effort. 

Install the WooCommerce Refund Manager

To get started, follow these steps to install the key files and activate the plugin on your store: 

• Download the .zip file from the Smart Refund for WooCommerce product page 
• Go to WordPress Admin > Plugins > Add New 
• Click the Upload plugin & add the downloaded file
• Choose to Install Now and Activate

Setup the Plugin and Customize Settings 

After you install the WooCommerce return order plugin, it’s time to set up its features to create a custom refund system on your store. All these settings will take just a few minutes without any coding, so you can rest assured the process will be super simple. 

1. Create Multiple Refund Conditions 

First, you need to create rules by going to the WooCommerce > Refund Manager > Refund Rules setting. From there, you can create multiple rules that can be edited at any time. The rules help create the desired conditions under which you want to offer refunds. You can add the rule title, set its priority, and choose further options. 

For example, you might want to offer refunds on specific products like shirts, caps, etc, or block users from a certain country from requesting refunds. All of this can be done through the rule-based approach. 

2. Set a Refund Timeline

As you create multiple conditions to offer refunds on your store, you can choose to add timeframes to set rule validity. Within the Refund Manager settings, you can add a start and end date so the refund expires after the desired duration. 

3. Restrict by Products, Categories & User Roles 

In this step, you can set rule restrictions to ensure the right customers can request for refunds on desired items only. You can apply restrictions by user roles, products, countries, and payment methods. For example, you can restrict refund requests for guest users to encourage them to register on your store. You can also block users who have purchased sale items from requesting refunds, etc. 

4. Enable File Upload Option Per Order or Per Product 

The WooCommerce return and refund plugin allows you to offer refunds either per product or for the whole order. Additionally, when users request for a refund, you can allow them to upload files as well, improving their refund experience on your store. From the Refund Rules settings, you can allow users to upload files for each product or go to WooCommerce > Refund Manager > Refund Settings > General Settings and enable the file upload feature for the whole order. 

5. Customize Refund Coupon & Button Style 

After you are done creating the rules, setting limitations and adjusting the file upload options, you can now start customizing the refund button. To make it more prominent and visually appealing, you can adjust the refund button text, color & styling as you like by going to the WooCommerce > Refund Manager > Refund Settings > General Settings > Styling. You can also customize the coupon to code and expiry from the General Settings. 

6. View Request History through a Log 

For manual request approval, you can visit the Refund Request log and manually accept or reject requests. Go to WooCommerce > Refund Manager > Refund Request settings to view requests and perform bulk actions as needed. 

Add the Refund Feature Programmatically  

If you dont want to use a plugin, you can still add the refund feature to your store by adding a custom code. Although it is more time consuming and requires a strong grip over web development concepts, it offers a higher degree of freedom. It allows you to design the refund feature exactly the way you like, and you can add as many options as you want. Below is a custom code that you can look into: 

The wc_create_refund API function from WooCommerce can be used to create refunds. First, let’s clarify what we can pass to that function.

7 arguments that we can pass in an array to that function:

• amount – The amount to be refunded
• reason – Reason of the refund
• order_id – ID of the order we want to refund
• refund_id – ID of the refund we want to use again and retry
• line_items – Array of line items which we want to refund from the order
• refund_payment – Boolean. If true, the refund process will also try to refund the payment through the payment gateway
• restock_items – If true, it will restock the items back by the quantity of each line item that we have refunded

We will now start creating our own function. This function will receive the Order ID and the refund reason.

<?php
	/**
	* Process Order Refund through Code
	* @return WC_Order_Refund|WP_Error
	*/
	function ibenic_wc_refund_order( $order_id, $refund_reason = ” ) {
	$order = wc_get_order( $order_id );
	// If it’s something else such as a WC_Order_Refund, we don’t want that.
	if( ! is_a( $order, ‘WC_Order’) ) {
	return new WP_Error( ‘wc-order’, __( ‘Provided ID is not a WC Order’, ‘yourtextdomain’ ) );
	}
	if( ‘refunded’ == $order->get_status() ) {
	return new WP_Error( ‘wc-order’, __( ‘Order has been already refunded’, ‘yourtextdomain’ ) );
	}
	// Get Items
	$order_items = $order->get_items();
	// Refund Amount
	$refund_amount = 0;
	// Prepare line items which we are refunding
	$line_items = array();
	// Other code will go here
	}

<?php
	/**
	* Process Order Refund through Code
	* @return WC_Order_Refund|WP_Error
	*/
	function ibenic_wc_refund_order( $order_id, $refund_reason = ” ) {
	// …
	if ( $order_items ) {
	foreach( $order_items as $item_id => $item ) {
	$item_meta = $order->get_item_meta( $item_id );
	$tax_data = $item_meta[‘_line_tax_data’];
	$refund_tax = 0;
	if( is_array( $tax_data[0] ) ) {
	$refund_tax = array_map( ‘wc_format_decimal’, $tax_data[0] );
	}
	$refund_amount = wc_format_decimal( $refund_amount ) + wc_format_decimal( $item_meta[‘_line_total’][0] );
	$line_items[ $item_id ] = array(
	‘qty’ => $item_meta[‘_qty’][0],
	‘refund_total’ => wc_format_decimal( $item_meta[‘_line_total’][0] ),
	‘refund_tax’ => $refund_tax );
	}
	}
	// Order Items were processed. We can now create a refund
	}

All we need to do now is process the refund because we have everything we need.

<?php
	/**
	* Process Order Refund through Code
	* @return WC_Order_Refund|WP_Error
	*/
	function ibenic_wc_refund_order( $order_id, $refund_reason = ” ) {
	// …
	$refund = wc_create_refund( array(
	‘amount’ => $refund_amount,
	‘reason’ => $refund_reason,
	‘order_id’ => $order_id,
	‘line_items’ => $line_items,
	‘refund_payment’ => true
	));
	return $refund;
	}

This lesson introduced us to WooCommerce refunds and showed us how to use the WooCommerce API to produce them.

Why Offer Refunds to Your Customers?

Many customers now a days choose to shop from online stores that offer refunds. The option is not just for ease, but it also builds trust and ensures that the customer will be compensated in case the product is not good enough. 

Offering refunds builds a strong reputation and minimizes the hesitation that many might feel before making their first purchase from you. According to the Narvar Consumer Survey, 49% of customers check a retailer’s Return Policy before buying anything. Thus, it is important for brands to realize the importance of this feature and give it thoughtful consideration. 

Conclusion

In this article, we explored ways to add the WooCommerce refund feature to a website. We started with the installation step and learned about how to create rules and set restrictions based on products and user country. 

We encourage you to consider refunds as your new marketing strategy if you are looking for ways to optimize your impact on customers. For more guides, explanatory blogs, and eCommerce tips, we encourage you to explore Koala Apps.