About credits, refunds, and adjustments
About credits, refunds, and adjustments
You’ll get a credit if you have paid for invalid clicks on your ads. You'll get a refund if you delete your account and have a positive balance. Microsoft Advertising also adjusts billing documents occasionally to make sure you're paying your fair share. Find out how the process works and what to expect.Microsoft Advertising will issue credits and refunds for the following reasons:
- Invalid clicks.
- If your account is deactivated and you have a positive prepay balance or a negative postpay balance.
- If your account is deactivated by Microsoft Advertising for any reason, Microsoft Advertising reserves the right to issue refunds for payments made at its sole discretion. For more information, see our Microsoft Advertising policies.
Microsoft Advertising does not issue credits for other reasons, including poor ad performance or ROI, system or tool downtime, test accounts or campaigns, and bank overdraft fees.
Microsoft Advertising has traffic quality protection systems in place to help ensure that you are paying for standard-quality clicks (those that come from people with interest in your business) and not for low-quality or invalid clicks (those that exhibit characteristics of unclear commercial intent, patterns of unusual activity, search engine robots, or fraudulent activity).
We systematically analyze clicks to determine their validity and, when possible, remove invalid clicks before they are reported to you. If potentially invalid clicks are detected, members of our team can flag the case, examine the affected accounts, and issue refunds where appropriate. For detailed information about click quality and invalid clicks, visit our Traffic Quality Center.
If you suspect that you have been billed for low-quality or invalid clicks, please contact Support. We can start an investigation to determine whether a credit should be made to your account.
For more information on how to check for invalid clicks, see Monitoring clicks: Telling the good from the bad.
Although Microsoft Advertising filters out many low-quality or invalid clicks before you are charged, if you are billed for any clicks that are later determined to be invalid, your bill will be adjusted accordingly.
- Microsoft Advertising reviews click activity on your account and if we determine that there have been invalid clicks, we investigate further.
- If our investigation verifies that clicks are invalid, your account is credited for the amount of the invalid clicks plus any associated taxes. Credits are processed throughout the month, but they are rolled up as a line item per campaign on your monthly billing statement or invoice.
- The credit will be used to pay for any existing account balance. If, after the credit is applied, you still have a credit (negative total balance), the credit will be applied to future advertising charges.
Investigating invalid clicks can take some time. After you contact us and we start the investigation, it can take up to a month before you see a credit on your monthly billing statement or invoice.
Note
Please note: if there is a change in your billing setup (such as the addition of a new SAP ID), any credit for invalid clicks will be processed as a credit memo.
If your account is deactivated and we determine a transaction is refund eligible, we will automatically attempt to issue a refund. The refund will be issued using the same payment method used during the original transaction; for example, if you paid with a credit card, you will receive your refund on that credit card.
If you paid using SEPA Direct Debit, check, or wire transfer, please see "Refunds via SEPA Direct Debit, check, or wire transfer" for special instructions.
| Your payment method | How you will receive your refund | Estimated time to receive your refund after processing* |
|---|---|---|
| Credit or debit card | Credit or debit card | 1-2 business days |
| PayPal | PayPal | 1-2 business days |
| Check | Check | 4-6 weeks |
| Bank/wire transfer | Bank/wire transfer | 10 business days |
| Boleto Bancario (Brazilian real only) | Wire transfer | 10 business days |
Once initiated and subject to the provision of all required detail by the customer, refund requests can take up to 90 working days to process.
Note
If you paid by check in Brazilian real, your account balance will be refunded by wire transfer.
If you funded your account using SEPA direct debit, check, or wire transfer, you will need to contact Support to initiate a manual refund to your bank account. You will receive your refund in approximately 5 business days after the manual refund is started by our Support team.
Billing adjustments
Sometimes, we goof, and you end up being overcharged or undercharged. Microsoft Advertising will do what's right to make sure you're paying your fair share. To fix incorrect billing, you may see one of the following:
- Credit memo, a standalone billing document in the Billing tab that identifies a credit you've received from an overpayment.
- Debit memo, a standalone billing document in the Billing tab that identifies an amount owed due to an underpayment.
- Reconciled charge, a line item within a billing document that restates past charges, either as a debit or a credit. For postpay threshold and monthly invoice accounts, a reconciled charge is a debit that collects for an underpayment. For prepay accounts, a reconciled charge can be a credit that returns an overpayment or a debit that collects for an underpayment.