Question
- What happens when I refund a student's subscription or payment plan with Thinkific Payments?
- Will students immediately lose access to a product if I cancel their recurring payments through Thinkific Payments?
- Will students immediately be unenrolled in a product if I cancel their recurring payments through Thinkific Payments?
Solution
Cancelling a Student's Subscription or Payment Plan
With TCommerce powered by Thinkific Payments, you can manage student payments directly from your Thinkific admin dashboard.
If you cancel a student's subscription or payment plan from the admin dashboard, the student will lose access to the product on the date their next recurring payment was due (i.e. at the end of their current billing period).
You can also immediately remove a student's access to a product by manually unenrolling them. For instructions, please refer to: How to Unenroll Students and Process Refunds.
Pausing or Resuming a Student's Subscription or Payment Plan
An alternative to canceling your student's subscription or payment plan would be to use the Pause and Resume feature.
This feature gives you the ability to pause and resume subscriptions or payment plans for your students by temporarily disabling your student's billing, either indefinitely, or until a set date. This feature allows you to retain your students while offering them flexibility.
Refunding a Student's Subscription or Payment Plan
You also have the option to refund students directly from your Thinkific admin dashboard.
When you provide a full or partial refund, the associated Sales Tax or VAT will be refunded to the student as well. In the case of a full refund, the full tax charge is refunded. In the case of a partial refund, only the proportional amount of the tax charge is refunded.
Note that there are no fees to refund a charge, but the fees from the original charge are not returned. This is true for full and partial refunds.
After you've issued a refund, the refunded student will still have access to the product. You can remove a student's access to a product at any time by manually unenrolling them. For instructions, please refer to: How to Unenroll Students and Process Refunds.
Course progress will be saved for unenrolled students in case they wish to re-purchase a product in the future.
Important Considerations
- If you need to refund a payment processed through Stripe or PayPal, before you switched to Thinkific Payments, you can do so from your account in Stripe or PayPal. The Provider column will list Stripe for Stripe transactions and PayPal for PayPal transactions. For more information please refer to our article: Did my student's purchase go through Thinkific Payments, Stripe, or PayPal?
- Product progress will be saved for unenrolled students.