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 and deposits → What guests pay → Cancellations and refunds (No refunds, Full refund or Partial refund with a percentage) and its Refund cut-off:

• A customer who cancels before the cut-off is refunded per the policy.
• One who cancels after it (or under a no-refund policy) gets nothing back automatically. Online, nobody can cancel once their booking time has passed.
• A special date can have its own cut-off (its Money back if they cancel, on Special dates), and bookings made for that date use it.
• A moved booking — the cut-off counts back from whichever is earlier, the booking time that was paid for or the new time, so a move can never stretch the deadline (moving a booking later leaves it where it was; moving it earlier brings it forward).
• When staff cancel, their choice decides it: refunding pays out what the policy allows, keeping it keeps the deposit, and a full-refund override ("refund the full amount anyway") is offered when the policy would return £0. In a booking's details and its quick actions (on the Timeline, the floor plan or the Bookings list) the choices read Cancel and refund … / Cancel and keep the … deposit. If your venue turns kept deposits into credit, a kept deposit becomes a gift card for the guest instead — unless you tick Keep it — no credit (how that works).

Two special cases: declining a pending booking request always refunds the deposit in full, and a booking flagged through the "Report and 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?