An artist is asking for an entry fee refund

Entry fee payments go directly to your PayPal or Square account, so refunds need to be issued by you through whichever processor handled the payment. EntryThingy does not process or hold entry fee payments.

How to issue a refund

PayPal calls: Log in to your PayPal account, find the transaction, and use PayPal's refund option to return the payment to the artist.

Square calls: Open your Square Dashboard, go to Transactions, find the payment, and click Refund. Square sends the refund back to the artist's original card.

After issuing a refund, the artist's entry status stays as Submitted unless you change it manually from your call's Entries list. EntryThingy doesn't automatically revert the status — galleries usually want to keep the submission record even when fees are refunded.

Why artists sometimes get charged twice

On PayPal calls, the most common cause is that PayPal IPN (Instant Payment Notification) isn't configured for your account. Without IPN, EntryThingy can't automatically confirm the payment, which can lead to duplicate charges when an artist tries to pay again. This only applies to legacy button-code calls — calls on the connected-PayPal flow don't use IPN. See Connect your PayPal account.

On Square calls, duplicate charges are rare because Square's webhooks are reliable. If an artist did pay twice (usually because they reloaded the checkout page mid-payment), refund the duplicate from your Square Dashboard.

If you need help, email us at hello@entrythingy.com.