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Where to find it: Main → Shipping → Returns — Open in OTO ↗
A return is a second order running backwards, and it is the one nobody designs for. This module gives it the same machinery the outbound order gets — a request, a shipment, a receipt, an inspection and a decision, each recorded.

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The problem it solves

The cost of a return is rarely the refund. It is the handling: someone answering an email, someone booking a collection, a parcel arriving at a warehouse with no paperwork, a box that sits on a bench for a week because nobody knows whether it was approved, and a customer who has neither their money nor their item and is now telling people about it. Underneath that is an uncertainty problem. Until someone physically opens the box, you do not know what came back, in what condition, or whether the refund you already promised was the right one. Every step that happens before that moment is a guess, and every guess that turns out wrong costs money twice.

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Two ways a return starts

Both land in the same place: the Returns screen, as a request with its own identifier. A return carries the order number with a return suffix — OID-10288-10120-R1 — so a second return against the same order is distinguishable from the first.
A failed delivery is not thisAn undelivered parcel coming back to you is a return to origin, and it travels a different path — see Returns receiving. The returns covered here are the ones a customer asks for, on an order they already have.Keeping the two separate matters: they have different causes, different costs and different fixes. Counting them together hides both.

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The lifecycle

A return moves from request through approval, reverse shipment, receiving, inspection and refundA return moves from request through approval, reverse shipment, receiving, inspection and refund

The order of these is the point. Refunding before confirming is the most common and most expensive way to run returns.

Refund last, deliberatelyIt is tempting to refund on approval, because it feels generous and it closes the conversation. It also means refunding items that never arrive, arrive broken, or arrive as something else entirely — and recovering that money afterwards is close to impossible.Putting confirmation before the refund costs the customer a few days and costs you nothing. Where speed genuinely matters commercially, that is a decision to make per category, with the numbers in front of you, rather than a default.

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Where it lives

The Returns screen on the In Progress tab

Fig. 1 — Status tracks where the return itself has got to; Return Approval is a separate column, because a return can be approved and still be at the very start of its journey.

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Who runs it

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Functions in this module

Customer returns

4 features

Returns receiving

5 features

Return automation

3 features

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What it connects to

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At a glance