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Sail POS & Focus POS: A customer reports two charges for one visit - don't refund right away

Summary. Walks through why a suspected duplicate charge is usually not a real error, why it shouldn't be treated as an emergency or refunded on the spot, and what to actually do (and when) if it turns out to be a genuine duplicate.

Applies to. Sail POS and Focus POS - all current versions.

Before you start

  • Get three things from the customer or manager: the date of the transaction, the charged amount, and the last 4 digits of the card.
  • Have a tech confirm the suspected duplicate before anything else happens. This is not an emergency in almost all cases, and acting before it's confirmed can cost the business money (see below).

Why this usually isn't a real duplicate charge

Most of the time, what looks like two charges is actually one pending authorization hold sitting on the customer's account alongside the real, posted charge - not two separate charges. Pending holds can take about a week to fall off on the bank's side. Until that happens, the customer's statement or banking app may show what looks like a duplicate even though only one charge will ultimately remain.

Don't refund immediately. If a refund is issued before a pending hold has had a chance to drop off, and it turns out there was never a true second charge, the business is now out that money - refunding something that was never actually taken. This is why a suspected duplicate should never be treated as an urgent, same-day fix.

How to verify

  1. Have a tech pull the relevant report using the transaction date and last 4 digits:
    • Focus: Setup > Reports > CC Payment, Non-Cash, or Credit Card report (filter by date and account/last 4).
    • Sail: Backoffice > Reporting > Reports > Accounting > Batch Report by Date.
  2. Confirm whether there are genuinely two settled transactions for that date/amount/card, or just one.

What to do

  1. If only one real transaction shows up: let the customer know the second charge they're seeing is a pending hold and should fall off on its own, typically within about a week. No action needed yet.
  2. Wait. Give it about a week for the pending hold to clear.
  3. If, after about a week, the duplicate charge still hasn't fallen off: issue a refund through the POS.

Verify it worked

  • Confirm the refund appears against the correct original transaction.
  • Confirm with the customer that only one charge remains on their statement.

If it doesn't work

  • If the report shows something that doesn't match this pattern (e.g., two auth codes that both fully settled, or a mismatched amount), that's a different scenario - escalate to the payments team rather than issuing a refund yourself.
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