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Manual Account Adjustments for Chargebacks and Disputes in sonarPay

Jennifer Trower Updated by Jennifer Trower

Read Time: 2 mins

This article helps to ensure that subscriber balances, revenue reporting, and reconciliation remain accurate while dispute handling is not yet fully native in the platform.

Chargebacks and disputes are managed in the sonarPay portal, but their financial impact must still be reflected manually in the subscriber account in Sonar.

At this time, sonarPay and Sonar do not automatically synchronize dispute outcomes. This means operators must reconcile the account manually after the dispute is resolved. In general, think of sonarPay as the place where disputes are tracked and decided, and Sonar as the place where account balances must be corrected.

Before making any account adjustment, confirm the final dispute outcome in the sonarPay portal.

Disputes are processor-driven events that require internal correction in Sonar. Because these events are not automatically synchronized today, you must review the dispute result and then decide whether any balance adjustment is needed in the subscriber account.

How Dispute Outcomes Should be Handled

If the Dispute is Won

If the dispute is resolved in the merchant’s favor, no action is required in Sonar. The original payment remains valid, so the subscriber account should not be adjusted.

If the Dispute is Lost

If the dispute is resolved in the cardholder’s favor, reverse the original payment in the subscriber account.

This should be handled as a reversal, not a refund, because the payment processor has already removed the funds.

Reversal vs. refund

It is important to use the correct adjustment type when handling lost disputes.

  1. A refund sends money back through the processor.
  2. A reversal adjusts the subscriber balance internally in Sonar.

For disputes, the funds have already been removed by the processor. Because of this, the correct action is to use a reversal.

Using a refund in this situation can create additional financial errors.

Why this matters

If a lost dispute is not corrected in Sonar, subscriber balances, revenue, and reconciliation reporting can become inaccurate because disputes are external financial events that require manual account adjustments.

Details
In some cases, a refund may have been issued before the dispute was resolved. This can affect transaction linkage and may contribute to the dispute being won.

However, this is not a recommended workflow and should not be used as a standard process.

To reduce errors and keep records accurate, follow these steps:

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