Why was (or wasn't) a deposit refunded?

A deposit refund follows your cancellation policy and deadline, plus the staff member's Refund or Retain choice at cancellation.

A deposit refund is decided by your Cancellation policy on Settings → Payments & deposits → Deposits (No refunds, Full refund or Partial refund with a percentage) and its Cancellation deadline — a customer who cancels before the deadline is refunded per the policy, and one who cancels after it (or under a no-refund policy) gets nothing back automatically. When staff cancel a booking, their choice in the dialog decides it: Cancel & Issue Refund pays out what the policy allows, Cancel & Retain Deposit keeps it, and Refund deposit anyway is a full-refund override for when the policy would return £0. Two special cases: declining a pending booking request always refunds the deposit in full, and a booking flagged through the "Report & cancel it" email link (for a booking the recipient didn't make) holds its deposit for manual review rather than auto-refunding — once you've reviewed it, refund it with Refund… in the booking's payment section. You can also refund part or all of any booking's payment without cancelling it from that same Refund… button (see When do customers get their deposit back?). Anything refunded earlier on the same booking counts toward the policy amount (a policy refund tops up, never doubles up), and pay-in-full bookings follow exactly the same policy — their dialogs and emails just say "payment". Related: When do customers get their deposit back?