Refunds

When a shop gives you money back, the refund lands in your account as income. But it isn’t really income: it undoes part of a purchase. Linking the refund to the original purchase tells MoneyMatter to take it off your spending instead of counting it as money earned.

What a refund link does

A refund link connects a refund to the transaction it reverses. Usually that’s an income refunding an expense. It works the other way round too: an expense that pays back money you received, for example returning part of a payment a customer made.

It doesn’t change any balance. The refund already changed your account balance when you recorded it. The link doesn’t move money again.
It changes your stats. The refunded amount comes off the original purchase’s spending, and doesn’t count as income. See How refunds affect your stats.

Once linked, both transactions show a small circular-arrow icon in the transaction list. Hover over it to see Refund.

To find refunds in the list, open the Filters menu above it and add Refunds. Choose Only to see linked refunds and their purchases, or Exclude to hide them. See Search and filter.

Link a refund

You can start from either transaction. Both ways use the Link refund button under More options in the transaction dialog. On a computer, More options is the right-hand column; on a phone, it’s a button at the bottom of the dialog.

The Link refund dialog shows one list, and you don’t choose a direction. If the transaction already has refund links, they decide which side it’s on. Otherwise the first record you tick decides, by date: the earlier record is the purchase and the later one is the refund. If both are on the same day, the expense is the purchase.

At the top, a meter shows how much is linked out of this transaction’s amount, for example “€50.00 / €100.00”.

Start from the refund

Open the refund in the transaction list, or add it with Add transaction.
Under More options, click Link refund.
Tick the original purchase in the list. On a saved refund you can tick several purchases.
Optional: to set how much of the refund goes to each purchase, click Adjust amounts next to the meter.
Click Save. The footer shows how many you ticked, for example “2 purchases ticked”.
Back in the transaction dialog, Linked refunds shows your pick. Click Edit (the save button at the bottom of the dialog), or Create for a new transaction, to save the link.

While you’re adding the refund as a new transaction, you can link it to one purchase only, dated on or before the refund. Its share stops at what’s left of the purchase, and you can change it in Adjust amounts.

Start from the purchase

Open the original purchase in the transaction list.
Under More options, click Link refund.
Tick every transaction that refunds this one. You can tick several. The meter shows how much of the purchase they pay back, and the footer reads, for example, “2 refunds ticked”.
Click Save.
Back in the transaction dialog, click Edit to save the links.

The purchase has to be saved first. While you’re adding a new transaction, records dated after it are greyed out with “Save this record first to link refunds dated after it”.

The Link refund dialog opened from a 100 EUR purchase, with incomes of 20 and 30 EUR ticked and the Save button in the footer.

Find the right transaction

Recommended at the top suggests up to 5 transactions from the last six months whose amount is within 50 of this one’s in your base currency, for example within 50 EUR either way if your base currency is EUR.
All transactions lists the rest. Use the Search notes… box, or Filters to narrow it by From date, To date, Amount from (gte) and To (lte).

The list only shows transactions of the opposite type, from any of your accounts. Transfers, planned transactions and transactions that are already a refund of something else aren’t listed. A purchase that already has a partial refund stays in the list, so you can add more refunds to it.

Partial and multiple refunds

A purchase can have several refunds, and one saved refund can be shared across several purchases. Each link carries a share: how much of the refund goes to that purchase. For example, you order three items for 100 EUR and return two of them separately, getting 20 EUR and 30 EUR back. Link both refunds to the same purchase, and 50 EUR of it is treated as refunded.

In the other direction, say a single 40 EUR refund covers returns from two orders. Open the saved refund, tick both purchases, click Adjust amounts and enter each one’s share, for example 25 EUR and 15 EUR. The shares can’t add up to more than the refund. A new transaction can be linked to only one purchase, so save it first, then share it.

When the purchase and its refunds use the same currency, the refunds together can’t be more than the purchase. The limit applies per purchase (or split) and counts only each refund’s share linked to it. When you tick a record, its share stops at what’s left of the purchase. In Adjust amounts, a share bigger than that shows “More than what is left of this purchase” and Done is turned off. From the purchase’s side, if the refunds add up to more than the purchase, for example after you lower its amount, the footer says “These refunds add up to more than the purchase. Untick one.” and Save is turned off.

When the currencies differ, there’s no limit. Each side is converted at the exchange rate for its own date, so a genuine refund can be worth more than the purchase once converted. The dialog only warns you. Refunds in a different currency also don’t count toward the limit for same-currency refunds.

Refund part of a split purchase

If the purchase is split across categories, you can say which part the refund is for. For example, a supermarket receipt split between Groceries and Household, where you returned a household item.

Open the refund and click Link refund.
Tick the split purchase. Select which part to refund opens.
Pick the main category, marked (main) and shown with the amount left for it after the splits, or one of the splits.
Click Confirm, then Save, then Edit in the transaction dialog.

You can pick any part that still has something left to refund. A part with nothing left can’t be linked, and you’ll see “This purchase is already fully refunded by other refunds.” If the refund is bigger than what’s left of that part, its share stops there, and you can check it in Adjust amounts. If you picked a split, the linked row shows “Refunds category portion” below it.

The Select which part to refund dialog, listing the main category (Groceries, marked (main)) with its remaining amount and a split category (Home, garden), with the Confirm button.

Refunds you tick from the purchase’s side apply to the whole purchase, while refunds already linked keep their split and share. To refund one part, start from the refund.

If you edit the purchase or its splits later:

For refunds in the same currency as the purchase, you can’t lower a refunded split below what’s been refunded from it. You’ll see “Total refund amount cannot be greater than the split amount”. Lowering the whole purchase below its refunds fails the same way, with “Total refund amount cannot be greater than the original transaction amount”. To go lower, first unlink the refunds or lower their shares. Refunds in a different currency don’t block the change.
If you remove a refunded split, or remove all splits, its refunds move to the purchase as a whole.

Rules for refund links

Opposite types. An income refunds an expense, and an expense refunds an income.
Any account. The refund can land on a different account from the purchase, for example a refund paid back to a different card.
No transfers. Neither side can be a transfer, including Out of Wallet ones. The Link refund button doesn’t appear on the Transfer tab.
No planned transactions.
No refunds of refunds. A transaction that is itself a refund can’t be refunded.
Changing the type removes the link. If you switch a transaction between Expense and Income, its refund links are cleared and you’ll see “Refund link removed because the transaction type changed.” The links are removed when you save.

How refunds affect your stats

A linked refund is treated as money you never really spent, rather than money you earned.

Spending by category. The refund comes off the category of the original purchase, or of the split you picked. The refund’s own category is ignored. Say you spend 200 on a laptop under Electronics, then get 50 back as income filed under Other. Electronics shows 150 spent, and Other shows no income from it.

Cash flow. On the Cash Flow page in Analytics and the Cash Flow widget on the dashboard, the refund lowers your expenses instead of raising your income. Your net result is the same either way; only where the money shows up changes. You pay 100 EUR on 10 January and get 30 EUR back on 20 January: January shows 70 EUR of expenses, no income, and a net of −70 EUR.

Refunds in a later month. In Cash Flow, the reduction lands in the month the money came back. You pay 100 EUR in January and get 30 EUR back on 5 February. If you view January and February together, January shows 100 EUR of expenses, February shows −30 EUR of expenses, and the two months together show 70 EUR. If you view February on its own, the purchase is outside the period, so the 30 EUR shows up as ordinary income.

Category charts use the purchase’s period. In spending-by-category charts, such as the Expenses Structure widget on the dashboard, a refund is always taken off the period that contains the original purchase, even if the money came back later. In the example above, January shows 70 EUR for the category and February shows no change. This is why Cash Flow and category charts can disagree for a refund that crosses months.

Category charts never go below zero. A category’s spending stops at zero, and a refund only reduces a category that has spending in the period shown.

For more on how each report is calculated, see How stats are calculated.

Unlink or delete a refund

To unlink, open either transaction, click the ✕ (Unlink refund) on the row under Linked refunds, then click Edit. Both transactions stay, and any other refunds of the same purchase stay linked.

To delete, delete either transaction as usual. Its refund links are removed automatically, and the confirmation dialog says so. If you delete a purchase, its refunds become ordinary income in your stats.

Refunds vs transfers

A refund is money coming back from a purchase. A transfer is money moving between your own accounts. The two don’t mix: a transfer can’t be linked as a refund, and transactions linked as refunds aren’t offered when you look for the other side of a transfer. If money you moved to another account came back, that’s a transfer, see How transfers work.