Refunds & cancelling registrations

Where refunds live

1. Open your Registrations roster

   Director dashboard → Registrations.

2. Open the registration

   Click the row to open its detail view, the full snapshot of what the athlete entered, plus their payment breakdown.

3. Scroll to “Refund or cancel”

   At the bottom of the detail view you'll find two buttons: Refund this registration… and Cancel without refunding. (For a free registration, or one already fully refunded, there's just a single cancel button. There's no money to return.)

Everything else about a registration (moving distances, editing answers, changing giveaways) lives behind the Manage registration button on the same detail view. Note that moving someone to a different distance never charges or refunds automatically; if a move creates a price difference you owe back, settle it here with a partial refund.

Choosing the amount

You pick any amount up to everything the athlete paid, and one-click presets fill it in for you:

• What your event received: the entry money that landed in your event's balance. This is the default, and the amount that costs your event nothing beyond returning its own revenue. (Events with a timing fee also get an Entry + timer fee preset. The timing fee is clawed back from the timing company.)
• Full refund, everything paid: returns the athlete 100% of what they were charged, including the Run This and card-processing fees. Those fees stay non-refundable to the platforms, so choosing this means your event pays them on the athlete's behalf, the dialog shows the exact split before you confirm.

You can also refund in stages, several partial refunds add up, and the cap always reflects what's already been returned. An optional reason field is saved to your records and shown to the athlete alongside the refund.

Your refund policy

Every event shows athletes a refund policy at checkout, behind a small Refund policy link next to the pay button. Out of the box it's the standard policy: all fees are final unless the event chooses to issue a refund, and processing fees are never refundable. You can replace it with your own wording from Edit event → More settings → Refund policy, for example “Full refunds until 30 days before race day.”

The exact policy text in force is saved with every registration as a record of what that athlete agreed to. You can always refund more generously than your policy promises; athletes just can't demand more than it says.

Releasing the spot

The refund form has a checkbox, off by default, to cancel the registration and release the spot. A refund on its own only moves money; the athlete stays registered. When you check the box, the refund also:

• frees the spot (capacity counts go down, and a distance that sold out on capacity reopens),
• returns their bib number to the pool,
• removes them from the public start line,
• pulls them out of their circle or team, and
• returns their giveaway sizes to inventory.

Leave it off for a partial refund where the athlete is still racing, say, a goodwill discount after the fact. They keep their spot, bib, start-line entry, and giveaways. The same checkbox, with the same default, is on the refund sheet in the Run This app.

Cancelling without a refund

Cancel without refunding does everything in the list above but moves no money, useful for a no-show policy, a duplicate registration, or when you've already settled up outside the platform. The form says it plainly: no money is refunded. If you want to give some or all of it back, use Refund instead (a refund with the release box checked cancels in the same step).

Restoring a cancelled registration

Cancelled someone by mistake? Open their row on the Registrations roster and choose Restore this registration, then confirm (it is also the only option in the Manage popup while they are cancelled, and it is on the registration sheet in the app, with the same confirmation). Any director of the event can do it. Restoring puts back everything the cancel took away:

• their spot (capacity counts go back up, and a distance that fills on the restore shows as sold out),
• their entry on the public start line,
• their bib number, if nobody else has been given it since,
• their circle or team membership, if the circle still exists and the team still has room, and
• their giveaway sizes, reserved from inventory again.

Money never moves on a restore. Whatever was refunded stays refunded; the roster keeps showing the refunded amount and your reason. If you want them to pay again, that is a new registration. The confirmation has a checkbox, on by default, to email the athlete that they are back in, since their refund email told them their spot was released. Untick it if you would rather tell them yourself.

Anything that could not go back exactly is spelled out before the popup closes: a bib that was reassigned to someone else (assign a new one), a team that filled up (they come back as a free agent), or a giveaway size that sold out in the meantime. For a sold-out giveaway you can free up a claim or raise its inventory on the Giveaways page and try again, or choose Restore without the sold-out giveaway.

Who can refund

Every director of the event, the lead director and every co-director, can refund and cancel registrations from the roster. Run This support can too. Paying off the fee tab by card stays with the event's payments manager; other directors see the tab explained but not the pay-off button. See payouts for how the payments-manager role works and how to hand it off.

• Past editions: once an event renews, refunds on the previous edition's registrations are handled by Run This, the roster shows a "contact us" note instead of the refund form.
• Registrations from the previous Run This platform: money paid before the platform migration can't be refunded from the dashboard. You can still cancel without refunding to free the spot; contact Run This to arrange the money side.

Refunding a donation

Donations are refunded on their own, never as part of a registration refund, and always in full. Open Finance insights, expand the payment in the Payments table, and choose Refund the donation. This works for a donation made on your event's donate page and for one added during registration checkout; in the second case the registration itself is untouched and can be refunded separately from the roster.

• What the donor gets back: everything they were charged, including any processing fee they chose to cover. Run This and card-processing fees are not returned, so your event covers those.
• Where it comes from: your event's Stripe balance. If that balance has already paid out, it goes negative and Stripe recovers the amount from your next incoming funds or the bank account on file.
• What updates: the fundraiser thermometer, any team or circle the donation was credited to, and your finance totals. The donor gets an email saying the donation was refunded and that the receipt they were sent no longer applies.
• Who can do it: any director of the event (the lead director or a co-director) or Run This support, the same as registration refunds. Donations from the previous Run This platform can't be refunded from the dashboard.

What the athlete sees

The registration isn't deleted. It survives in your roster marked Canceled with the refunded amount and your reason, and the athlete's own My races page shows the same thing. They also get a refund confirmation email. A partial refund without the release box leaves them registered and shows as Refunded instead. Refund totals flow into your Finance insights page, where the headline net subtracts them.