What pending charges are and how to handle them
"My customer has been charged but I don't have the order"
If the order isn't showing in the SumUp POS backend under Reports > Goodeats report, then the payment hasn't gone through successfully. This means you haven't received the money, and the money hasn't been taken from the customer.
Unfortunately in some circumstances the bank will keep the payment as "pending" on the customers statement, but it will disappear off automatically and thus no active refund process needs to be completed from your side. The customer also won't receive any email order confirmation for this order as our system doesn't recognise it as processed, it's only the bank which will see it as a pending charge which it will clear naturally.
We seem to see this happening more with people who bank with Monzo, and they have a helpful article on this here: https://monzo.com/help/payments-troubleshooting/card-payment-declined-still-been-charged
"My customer has been charged multiple times but we only received one order"
This is mainly the same as the above - if the orders aren't showing in the SumUp POS backend under Reports > Goodeats report, then the payment hasn't gone through successfully. This means you haven't received the money, and the money hasn't been taken from the customer.
The bank will sometimes keep the payment as "pending" on the customers statement, but it will disappear off automatically and thus no active refund process needs to be completed. The customer also won't receive any email order confirmation for these duplicate orders as our system doesn't recognise it as processed, it's only the bank which will see it as a pending charge which it will clear naturally.