Where a Refund Lands
This is the money behaviour on Onflow Ads that surprises people most, and it has nothing to do with the amount. A refund can be for the full figure, land in your wallet within seconds, and still leave you worse off in one specific way: the money can come back locked.
Locked money is spendable everywhere on Onflow Ads. It is simply not cashable. So a channel owner who spends earnings on the marketplace and is refunded finds the Withdrawable tile has dropped and never comes back up, even though the Total (USD) tile is unchanged.
There is no single rule that covers every product. This page gives you the three that exist.
The three pockets
| What it is | Can you withdraw it? | |
|---|---|---|
| Withdrawable balance | Paid-Promotions earnings | Yes |
| Locked balance | Top-ups, bonuses, most refunds, goodwill credit — counted inside your Total | No |
| Boost Credits | A separate promotional pocket, auto-applied to Boost orders | No |
Your Withdrawable figure is the arithmetic difference between your total balance and the locked portion of it. Anything that raises the locked portion lowers what you can cash out, without changing your Total at all.
Rule 1 — some products restore the original split
Boost Metrics and Subscriber Exchange reconstruct how the purchase was actually funded and put each part back where it came from.
| Product | What comes back |
|---|---|
| Boost Metrics order (could not start, cancelled, under-delivered) | The wallet leg returns as wallet cash, and only the promotional slice the checkout actually consumed is re-locked. The Boost Credits leg returns as Boost Credits. |
| Subscriber Exchange delivery boost (ad cancelled before any placement ran) | The exact cash-and-locked split the charge was taken with, restored to the cent. |
This is the fairest outcome and the one people expect: you are put back exactly where you were, in both amount and character.
If you paid for part of a Boost order with Boost Credits and the order was refunded to cash, promotional credit would have been converted into money. That is why the credit leg always returns as credit — it never becomes cash, on any path, including a refund.
Rule 2 — Paid Promotions locks the whole refund
Everywhere on the marketplace, money credited back to you is credited as locked platform credit, whatever funded the original charge.
That covers:
- a refund of a placement that was cancelled, declined, expired or never posted;
- a make-good or service credit after a delivery problem;
- a returned view-guarantee premium;
- a Verified Delivery Insurance payout;
- a counterparty's forfeited good-faith stake awarded to you.
If you pay for a placement out of your withdrawable earnings and it is later refunded, the refund comes back locked. You are not out of pocket — the money is still yours and still spendable across Onflow Ads — but it is no longer cashable, and nothing converts it back.
Your Total (USD) will look identical before and after. Your Withdrawable will not.
If you are holding Paid-Promotions earnings you intend to cash out, request the withdrawal first and spend afterwards from money you top up. The order of those two actions is the whole difference between keeping and losing the ability to withdraw that amount.
Bidding is safe. Buying is what converts. See Rule 3.
The same lock applies to compensation, awards and goodwill credit, which are not refunds at all — they are credited as platform credit and have never been withdrawable.
Rule 3 — a released hold comes back exactly as it was taken
A hold is not a purchase. Nothing was bought, so nothing needs to be reconstructed — the money simply returns in the character it left in.
| Hold released | What comes back |
|---|---|
| An auction bid you were outbid on, or a hold on an auction that produced no placement | Exactly as taken: what came out of your withdrawable balance goes back to your withdrawable balance, and only the promotional part comes back locked. |
| A channel owner's good-faith deposit, returned after a clean delivery | Withdrawable, because the stake was taken from real funds. Honouring a booking never costs you cashability. |
| The gross of a rejected withdrawal | Withdrawable, because the hold could only ever have been taken out of your withdrawable balance in the first place. |
This is why bidding on an auction costs you nothing, including nothing in flexibility. Losing an auction leaves your Withdrawable figure exactly where it started.
Rule 4 — where the split cannot be reconstructed, the whole refund is locked
If a refund path cannot reliably determine how the original purchase was funded, it credits the entire amount as locked balance. That is the conservative default: it can never accidentally turn promotional credit into cash, and it never leaves your Withdrawable figure higher than it was before the purchase.
The top-up refund is not in any of these categories
A top-up refund does not land in a pocket at all. It leaves the platform: the deposit is removed from your balance and the net is paid to an external destination. Nothing comes back to your wallet, and the bonuses that rode in with the deposit are removed rather than refunded.
See Requesting a Top-up Refund.
Worked example
You are a channel owner. You earn $400 from placements, so your Withdrawable reads $400.00 and your Total reads $400.00.
- You buy a $100 placement on the marketplace, paid from your earnings. Total $300.00, Withdrawable $300.00.
- The owner never posts it, so the booking is refunded in full. Total back to $400.00 — but the $100 comes back locked. Withdrawable $300.00.
- You are not out of pocket by a cent. But $100 of your balance is now platform credit rather than earnings, and no later action turns it back.
Had you instead bid $100 on an auction and been outbid, the hold would have returned exactly as it left, and your Withdrawable would still read $400.00.
If something goes wrong
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Your Withdrawable figure dropped and you did not withdraw | You spent earnings on something that was then refunded, and the refund came back locked. | Expected under Rule 2. Nothing converts it back; withdraw before you spend next time. |
| "Insufficient withdrawable balance." on a withdrawal you thought you could afford | Same cause — the Total is intact, but part of it is locked. | Check the Withdrawable tile rather than the Total. |
| A Boost refund that credited less cash than you expected | Part of the order was paid with Boost Credits, and that part came back as Boost Credits. | Check your boost-credit statement alongside Activity. |
| A refund you believe should have been withdrawable | Rules 2 and 4 are deliberate, not a defect. | If you believe the wrong rule was applied, quote the refund's OFT- reference to [email protected]. |
Related
- Your Balance and Transaction History — where the Withdrawable figure is shown and how it is derived.
- Withdrawing Your Earnings — the flow this page is protecting.
- Frozen and Held Funds — holds, and why released ones behave differently.
- Refunds — the two kinds of refund and their rules.