Refund a ThriveCart customer and cancel their subscription

1. Open Transactions in the ThriveCart dashboard and search by the customer's name, email address or invoice ID; set the time filter wider than the default "today".
2. Click Refund on the transaction, choose a full or partial refund in the modal and add an internal note with the reason.
3. Click Manage on the same transaction, choose Cancel, click Go and confirm with Cancel subscription.
4. Click Invoice and Re-send if the customer should get the final invoice, because ThriveCart does not email customers about a cancellation.
5. A refunded subscription keeps billing until it is cancelled, and a click on the wrong one of several payments cannot be undone. Both mistakes are easy when a customer bought a main product, a bump and an upsell that sit as separate transactions.

client@example.com asked for a refund within the 30-day guarantee. Refund their last ThriveCart payment, cancel the subscription so they are not billed again, and send them the final invoice.

1. 01

   Find every payment of the order

   list_transactions is searched by the email. A funnel purchase comes back as separate transactions for the main product, bump and upsell, so the agent shows them all and asks which ones the refund covers when the request is not explicit.

2. 02

   Check the guarantee and what was already refunded

   The agent compares the purchase date with the guarantee period you gave and reports the remaining refundable amount. A payment already refunded in full is skipped, and a request for more than the remaining amount is stopped before any call.

3. 03

   Refund with a reason on record

   refund_transaction runs after your OK, with the reason from the customer's email as the internal note. For a PayPal payment that fails, the agent reports that the PayPal balance is probably too low and suggests refunding from PayPal itself.

4. 04

   Cancel only the subscription that was refunded

   list_subscriptions confirms the subscription is still active or paused before cancel_subscription is called. A customer with two subscriptions keeps the other one, and a subscription already cancelled from the Customer Hub is reported, not cancelled twice.

5. 05

   Tell the customer

   ThriveCart sends no cancellation email to the buyer. The agent drafts a short confirmation with the refunded amount and the cancellation date for you to send, so the customer has the amounts and dates in writing.

client@example.com (Dana Client): 3 transactions on 2 Oct 2026, Landing Page Course $97.00, bump Template pack $27.00, first month $49.00.
Refunded after your OK: $97.00 and $27.00, note "30-day guarantee, asked 10 Oct".
The $49.00 monthly payment was left as is, per your reply.
Subscription sub_7731 cancelled on 12 Oct; ThriveCart added the $0.00 cancellation entry.
Draft reply to Dana is ready to send.

• A ThriveCart refund cannot be reversed, because it is sent straight to the payment processor, and the refund note stays internal, visible when you hover over the refund in Transactions.
• ThriveCart lets you refund partly several times up to the transaction total, and refunding a subscription payment, even the first one, leaves the subscription billing as scheduled.
• A cancelled ThriveCart subscription cannot be reactivated; the customer has to buy again to be billed in the future.
• ThriveCart emails the product owner about a cancellation with its source, such as dashboard, Customer Hub, processor or API, when notifications are on under My Profile > Notifications; the customer gets nothing.
• Refunds made directly in Stripe or PayPal instead of ThriveCart should sync back, but ThriveCart does not guarantee that every automation rule fires for them.

refund_transaction and cancel_subscription ask for your OK by default. To run it on a schedule without you, switch confirmation off for those tools in your dashboard.

Sources: ThriveCart help: Refunding a customer · ThriveCart help: Canceling customer subscriptions · ThriveCart help: Finding your customers and transactions · ThriveCart help: Notifications for subscription cancellations

curl https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/thrivecart/refund_transaction \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"transaction_id":"tx_20418","note":"30-day guarantee, asked 10 Oct"}'

{
  "transaction_id": "tx_20418",
  "status": "refunded",
  "amount": "97.00",
  "refunded_total": "97.00",
  "remaining": "0.00",
  "currency": "USD"
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the tool is thrivecart_refund_transaction. Example data.

• Create ThriveCart coupons for a sale and retire old ones
• Clone a ThriveCart product for a new cohort
• Review overdue and paused ThriveCart subscriptions
• ThriveCart API and MCP server: every tool
• All use cases