Refunds are something you handle yourself inside BrightStar — you don't file a request and wait for someone else to act on it. You open the order, choose full or partial, and confirm; the money returns to the card that paid. This matters most in the moments that actually happen at gatherings: someone can't make the retreat after all and asks for their deposit back, a kirtan door volunteer flags a duplicate purchase, or a festival gate discovers a ticket was bought twice by mistake. In all of these, the fix lives in the same place — the order itself.
Where to find it
Start from the event you are managing and open the order from there.
- 1Dashboard → Gatherings → your event → Sales → the order
- 2On the order page, open Edit Order and choose Issue a Refund
- 3Choose a full refund or enter a partial amount
- 4Confirm — the refund is created against the original charge
Full, partial, and what is actually refundable
A full refund on BrightStar returns the refundable portion of the order — the ticket subtotal plus any custom fee you charged, less discounts already applied and anything you've already refunded on that order. The BrightStar platform fee and the payment processing fee are not part of that figure. That's why a full refund is often a smaller number than the total the buyer originally paid.
Partial refunds work against that same refundable total, and they accumulate. BrightStar keeps a running record of what's already gone back on an order. Once an order has been refunded in full, it's blocked from further refunds. An order that's only been partially refunded stays open, so you can return to it later.
What happens to your payout when you refund
Your payout is reconciled at the same moment you issue the refund, not later. If the money has already been transferred to your Stripe account, BrightStar reverses a share of that transfer as part of the refund. Occasionally a reversal can't be completed. When that happens, the buyer's refund still goes through.
What else happens when a refund goes through
Refunding an order is not only a money movement. The refunded tickets are marked refunded, so anyone checking the guest list or scanning at the door sees accurate status. If the event uses assigned seating and the refund is a full one, the seats on that order are released back to the seating chart. If people are on the waitlist for that event, a spot-opened notification can go out. If an affiliate earned a commission on the order that has not yet been paid, their commission is cancelled or reduced and they are told by email.