Returned payments and chargebacks

What this covers

This applies to a payment your customer made online through Trussi's own payment provider (Payabli), by card or by bank transfer (ACH). A card payment can come back as a chargeback, where the cardholder disputes it with their bank, and a bank transfer can come back as an ACH return, where the payment fails after it looked like it had gone through (insufficient funds, a closed account, and similar reasons). A payment you recorded by hand, such as cash or a check, is not something Trussi can detect bouncing this way: it has no online transaction behind it to watch.

Online payments are set up by an account admin under Settings, in the Payments section, on the Configuration page. If that has not been set up for your account, this feature has nothing to watch.

How Trussi finds out

Your payment provider notifies Trussi the moment a bank returns a payment or a cardholder disputes a charge. Nobody in your office needs to notice a bank statement or forward an email: Trussi picks it up automatically and updates the project the same day the notice arrives.

What happens to the balance

This is the part that matters most, so here it is exactly:

• The original payment is never deleted or edited. It stays on the record, now marked Returned.
• Trussi adds a new, separate line for the amount that came back, labeled ACH return (funds withdrawn) or Chargeback (funds withdrawn). If only part of the payment was returned, only that part is added back.
• A project's balance due is always calculated fresh, as the sale price minus everything recorded in payments. Adding that negative line is what brings the balance back up. Nobody needs to recalculate or manually adjust anything for the balance to be correct.
• If that payment had been applied to an invoice that was marked Paid, and the return means the invoice is no longer fully paid, Trussi reopens the invoice as unpaid automatically. A voided invoice is left alone.
• If a card dispute is later decided in your favor, Trussi adds a matching positive line labeled Chargeback reversal (funds restored), which settles the balance again automatically, and the return closes itself as Recovered. Nobody has to do anything for that to happen. There is no equivalent automatic step for an ACH return: those only move to Recovered once your office manually says so, once the money has actually come back some other way.
• Trussi does not contact your customer about a returned payment on its own, and it never asks them for the money automatically. A return is sometimes a false alarm (for example, a second payment attempt on a different account that already went through), so deciding whether and how to follow up with the customer is left to your office.

What the office sees

On the project's Payments tab, a banner appears at the top whenever there is a return that has not been dealt with yet: "A payment was returned by the customer's bank" with the amount, and underneath it, "The balance due has been restored automatically. Open the return to see why and decide what happens next." A View return details button opens it.

In the payment list itself, the affected row shows its amount struck through with a red Returned badge, and the offsetting line next to it is tagged Return reversal.

Trussi also notifies your account admins, your back office, and whoever the project is assigned to, in-app, by push notification and by email, for example: "ACH payment returned - $420.00 on 123 Main St (Insufficient funds). The balance due has been restored." The same people are told again if a chargeback is later reversed in your favor.

If your account has QuickBooks Online connected, a returned payment is also flagged on the Export Payments screen under Finance: it cannot be selected for export, and if it had already been exported before the return came in, a Reverse in QuickBooks button appears there to remove it from QuickBooks. That only corrects the QuickBooks copy: your balance in Trussi is already right by that point.

Opening a return

Click View return details on the banner, or the Returned badge on the payment row. The Returned payment drawer shows the amount returned, the original payment, when it was paid, when it was returned, the payment method, the transaction reference, the bank's own message, and a plain-English reason such as Insufficient funds for an ACH return or Disputed by cardholder for a chargeback.

Deciding what happens next

Every return sits in one of three states: Open, Recovered, or Written off. From the drawer:

1. Mark as recovered if the customer paid you back another way. This is a note for your own records: it does not move any money, because the balance was already corrected the moment the return arrived. If they genuinely paid again, record that as its own new payment on the Payments tab.
2. Write off if you have decided not to pursue it. Trussi requires a note explaining why, so the decision is never anonymous.
3. Reopen this return puts it back to Open if you need to revisit it.

Who can do this

Seeing the Payments tab, including any returns on it, takes View on Payments. Deciding a return's outcome, recovering it, writing it off, or reopening it, takes Modify on Payments, the same permission that lets someone edit or delete a payment.