Return Management Feature Overview

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The Return Management feature allows you to create and manage returns for a sales order.

Once an order has been shipped, a Buyer or a Back Office User can initiate a return of the whole order or its individual items. See Shop Guide - Creating a Return and Managing Orders for details on how they can do that.

Note

You can also create and manage returns via Glue API. For details, see Retrieving Return Management Information.

Returnable Items and a Return Policy

Not all the order items can be returned. For an item to be returnable, it should:

  • Be in Shipped or Delivered state.
  • Fall on the return dates set forth in the Return Policy.

The Return Policy is a set of rules that defines what items can be returned: in what conditions, in what period of time, etc. Out of the box, you can only define within what period the items can be returned. For example, you can specify that an item can be returned within 14 days after the purchase.

Info

For now, you can set the Return Policy period in code only, there is no UI for that. See HowTo - Set Number of Days for a Return Policy for details.

Return Items States

The Return items can have the following states in the Order Management System (OMS):

  • Waiting for return: Buyer created a return but a Back Office User has not confirmed it yet.
  • Returned: the return has been received and confirmed by the Back Office User.
  • Refunded: Back Office User has made a refund for the returned items.
  • Return Canceled: the return has been canceled by a Back Office User because of the return policy, or for any other reason
  • Shipped to customer: the canceled return has been shipped back to the Buyer.
  • Delivered: Buyer has received the shipped return.

The relation of sales order items statuses and the return states is as follows: Sales Order Items and Statuses

Return Slip

Buyers and Back Office users can have a paper version of the return by printing the automatically generated return slip. The return slip contains return and sales order references, details on the returnable sales order items, and a barcode generated based on the return reference. Return slip

Return Management on the Storefront

Buyers can return entire orders or individual sales order items as soon as they have been delivered to them. When returning, the Buyers can select select or enter a return reason. See Shop Guide - Creating a Return for details on how the Buyers create the returns.

Note

For a Configurable Bundle, you can’t select to return an entire Configurable Bundle, but you can select to return separate items from it. The Product Bundles, on the contrary, are handled as one product, so only the whole bundle can be returned. You can not return individual items of a Product Bundle.

Once a return request has been submitted, it acquires the Waiting for return state. The return states change as the Back Office User processes the return. See Return Items States for details on the return states. Create return

Info

Next to each sales order item, there is the date till which the item can be returned. This date is controlled by the Return Policy. If the item is non-returnable, you cannot select the return reason and create the return.

All the returns created by the Buyer or by the Back Office User for the Buyer, are listed on the Returns page in the Customer Account. From here, the Buyer can view the return details and print the return slip. Returns details

Return Management in the Back Office

A Back Office User can create returns for the returnable items in the Ordres section of the Back Office. See Back Office User Guide - Managing Orders for details. Also, a Back Office user can view returns, change their states, print a return slip, and cancel the returns. See Back Office User Guide - Return Management for instructions on how to manage the returns in the Back Office.

Current Constraints

Currently, the feature has the following functional constraints which are going to be resolved in the future:

  • There is no user interface for managing the return policy and the return reasons.
  • You can’t return individual items of a Product Bundle.