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Where to find it: Settings → Return Settings → Return Portal — Open in OTO ↗
Every return that arrives as an email is a return you are handling twice. The portal exists so the customer does the first half themselves — and does it properly, with a reason and a photo attached.

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The branded return portal

A page of yours, on your brand, where a customer looks up their order and asks to send something back. It is configured at Settings → Return Settings → Return Portal, per brand. Two things are set on the brand first, at Settings → Account → Brands: the Portal URL — the link you put on your website and in your support replies — and the Return Policy URL, so the rules are one click from the request.
Return Portal settings

Fig. 1 — The return period, the reasons list, and instructions written once per language — English, Arabic and Turkish as tabs on the same editor.

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The policy

From the delivery date, not the order dateIt is a one-word distinction with real consequences. A thirty-day window counted from purchase quietly shrinks to a fortnight on anything that took two weeks to arrive — and the customer, who has had the item for two weeks, experiences that as a policy that changes depending on how slow you were.Counting from delivery gives every customer the same thirty days with the product in their hands, which is what the policy was always meant to say.
Requiring a photo is a real choiceTurned on, every request arrives with evidence, and a damage claim can be assessed without a conversation. Turned off, the request is one step shorter and more people finish it.The honest trade is friction against certainty, and it is worth setting per business rather than copying a default: a fashion retailer taking size returns wants the shorter path, an electronics retailer taking damage claims wants the photograph.

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How the item comes back

Allowed Return Methods is a required choice of one or more, each with the product’s own description:

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What they get back

Refund Options is a required multi-select of Money Back, Exchange and Store Credit — a refund to the original method, a different item instead, or the value kept with you to spend again.
Return methods, refund options and bank details

Fig. 2 — Three methods, three resolutions, and the switch that decides whether the customer is asked how to pay them.

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Paying a cash customer back

Beside the refund options sits Ask for Bank Details: “Request bank details from the customer for paid refunds. For COD orders, bank information is always required.”
This is the gap cash-on-delivery leavesA card refund reverses itself — the money goes back where it came from and nobody has to be asked anything. Cash has no route home. The customer handed notes to a driver, and there is no account to credit.So for COD the bank details are not optional and the portal insists on them, which is the difference between a refund that completes itself and one that becomes a support thread. In a region where a large share of orders are still paid in cash, that is not a detail — it is the difference between returns working and returns not.
Offer the order you want chosenThese three cost you very different amounts. A refund is revenue leaving; an exchange keeps the sale and usually keeps the customer; store credit keeps the money and buys a second visit.All three are worth offering — a customer forced into an exchange they did not want is a worse outcome than a clean refund. But which one the portal presents first, and how it is framed, is a commercial decision worth making on purpose.

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Making it look like yours

The portal carries the same customisation as the other branded pages: Use Branded Header and Use Branded Footer, advertisement banners and Instagram posts, and an Advanced Settings section for background, button and text colours. A live Preview renders it in Mobile and Desktop before you press Update.

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Returns in store

A customer who bought online and lives near one of your shops would usually rather walk in than wait for a carrier. Enabling In-Store lets them, and asks them to pick the branch — so the shop knows it is coming rather than being surprised by it.
The cheapest reverse logistics is the customer’s own journeyAn in-store return costs no collection, no label and no transit time, and it puts the item back in a location that can sell it. It also puts the customer in a shop, which is the one return outcome with an upside.It only works if the branch is prepared: the return still has to be received and confirmed against the request, exactly as a warehouse would — see Returns receiving.

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Approval

A submitted request lands on the In Progress tab of Shipping → Returns, where it is approved or rejected. The customer hears either way, automatically, if the return messages are configured — Return Request Created, Return Request Approved and Return Request Rejected exist on SMS, WhatsApp and email. The Returns list is built for triage. Alongside Order ID and Customer Name it carries Request Date, Status, Return TO, Shipment Number, Delivery Company, Return Method, Return Type, Customer Return Reason and Return Approval — all filterable, with a Tags column for the labels your team adds.
Filter by reason before you approve by habitApproving requests one at a time in date order is the slowest possible way to work through them, and it hides the pattern. Filtering by Customer Return Reason groups the decisions that are actually the same decision — and it shows you the product that is generating them.That second thing is where returns stop being a cost center. A sizing problem visible in the reasons is fixable on the product page; the same problem discovered one refund at a time is not.

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Raising one yourself

When a customer reaches you another way, a return can be started from Shipping → Shipments → Delivered: select the order, Return, then Create Return Order. The form takes return reason comments and attachments, a Refund Method — Money Back, Exchange or Store Credit — and a Return Method of home pickup or drop-off, then Confirm Return Request. It joins the same queue as a portal request, and from there the two are indistinguishable.

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Exchanges and store credit

An exchange is a return and a new order in one transaction, and it is the outcome worth designing for: the customer keeps their money with you, you keep the sale, and the item that comes back is usually resellable because the reason was fit rather than fault. Store credit does the same for the cases where an exchange will not do — the customer does not want a different size, they want to choose again later.