Duplicate donations — spotting and fixing them

"I think I was charged twice." It's one of the more alarming messages a campaign can receive — and usually, the donor wasn't. Here's how Pledgix prevents double charges, how genuine duplicates occasionally happen anyway, and the correct fix for each kind.

The protections you already have

Double-clicks and flaky connections don't double-charge. Every checkout attempt carries a unique fingerprint. If the same submission arrives twice — an impatient second click, a network retry, a refresh mid-payment — the second arrival is recognized and stopped before any charge runs. The donor may see a message that the donation is already being processed, asking them to wait and refresh; they end up with exactly one gift.

Imports block reused transaction IDs. If you import a donation with a transaction reference that already exists anywhere on Pledgix, it's rejected with a duplicate warning instead of being saved twice. (One-at-a-time manual entries don't carry a transaction reference, so this check applies to imports.) This is why filling the transaction reference column on imported gifts is worth the extra seconds.

How true duplicates still happen

The protections cover accidental resubmission of the same attempt. They can't cover a donor who genuinely completes checkout twice:

• They gave on their phone, weren't sure it worked, and gave again on their laptop.
• They intended $50 once, but returned to the page later and completed a second gift.
• Two family members each donated the "family gift."
• You recorded a check manually, and later imported a spreadsheet containing the same check without a matching transaction reference.

Each of these is two real, separate payments — so both appear as Approved donations, both count toward your total, and (for card gifts) both were actually charged.

Spotting duplicates

Open your campaign's Donations tab and look for the classic signature: same donor, same amount, minutes apart.

• Use the search box with the donor's name or email to pull all their gifts together.
• Sort or scan by date — duplicates almost always cluster within a short window.
• For a campaign-wide sweep (after an import, for example), export your donations and sort the spreadsheet by email and amount; pairs jump out immediately. See Exporting your donation data.

Check before acting: identical amounts on different days are usually intentional repeat generosity, not a duplicate. When in doubt, ask the donor.

Fixing a duplicate — by donation type

Online card duplicate (the donor was charged twice): refund one of the two. Open the extra donation's actions menu and use the refund action — the confirmation dialog tells you which of these applies:

• Stripe donations: the refund action itself returns the money to the donor's card, flips the record to Refunded, and adjusts your campaign and team totals automatically.
• Donations on the standard Pledgix rail: the refund action marks the record Refunded and adjusts your totals, but no money moves through Pledgix — issue the actual card refund from your payment gateway, and Pledgix syncs it to your records automatically.

Either way, don't leave a real double charge as a status edit alone — make sure the money is actually on its way back to the donor. See Refunds — what happens when you refund a donation.

Manual or imported duplicate (no money moved through Pledgix): delete the extra record from its actions menu. Deletion removes it entirely and recalculates your totals. Deleting is right here precisely because the record was a bookkeeping mistake, not a real second payment.

In both cases, everything downstream self-corrects: totals, team credit, the public feed, and — if the gift had been matched by a sponsor pool — the matched amount is returned to the pool for future donors.

Tip: Act on card duplicates promptly. A donor who spots a double charge on their statement and calls their bank triggers a chargeback — slower, costlier, and worse for your processing reputation than a 30-second refund from your dashboard.

After the fix

Reply to the donor confirming which gift was kept and that the extra was refunded (card refunds typically appear on their statement within 5–10 business days). Their receipt for the remaining donation stays valid — nothing to reissue.