Deb,
Not sure what you are using as far as PayPal goes. Personally I use Virtual Terminal, which handles all my credit card transactions, including PayPal orders. Virtual Terminal is a normal credit card processor, works seamlessly with the checkout page. When you checkout on my site you are going through PayPal, but you would never know, unless you selected PayPal as your payment source.
On virtual terminal I can pull up "payments received", click on the customer name, scroll down the page, click on Issue Refund, and either refund the entire amount or a partial amount. In addition to that, I can also put a note to the customer letting them know the reason for the refund.
One very good feature of Virtual Terminal, is that it costs a flat $30 a month, there are no other charges. In the past I had a third party payment processor, IPayment, which took an additional percentage and a per transaction fee. Total ripoff, in my opinion, that bill was starting to get very hefty, and due to lack of knowledge, I paid it for quite some time. So, after I learned about Virtual Terminal, I eliminated the leech by switching to PayPal for all my payment transactions, except Google Checkout, which is a separate entity. The system integrates with AC perfectly, and it works better if you get a $60 secure certificate from GoDaddy, this allows virtual terminal to use an https url within your domain, so the customer is not transferred over to another site. A lot of browsers will warn when that happens, and render the site "unsecure", which is a bunch of BS, but given all the internet issues on TV, that in itself is enough to scare potential customers away.
Virtual terminal is something you may want to consider. Easy to use and integrate with AC.
Best Regards,
Louis
TackleToyStore.com