Refunds not reflecting in Monthly Sales summary

[DML73]

When I refund a customer by clicking the "Refund" button on the orders.php page in Admin shouldn't this refund reflect in the Reports->Monthly Sales summary?

For example if I refund a customer $10, shouldn't the Gross Income and Year Total be $10 less?

[lankeeyankee]

Not really. I understand your logic, but you are thinking about a "net" sales report instead of a report of gross sales. In the US, when filing taxes, you have to report all (gross) sales and there is a separate line to report refunds to arrive at a net sales amount. The monthly sales report will be reporting gross sales. You would need a different report that shows either net sales or preferably everything - gross sales, net sales, refunds, discounts, chargebacks/order losses, etc. I use our accounting software for this information since as far as I am aware there isn't a report available for zen cart that shows this.

[DML73]

Thanks a lot for the clarification.

[swguy]

One mechanism people use to work around this is to create a new order status (Refunded or something like that), set that order to this status, and exclude orders in that status during sales reporting. Of course, this doesn't handle the case of partial refunds, etc.