When goods come back

You’ll need: Customer returns — note this one is enabled with Inventory, not Sales — if you cannot see these, the module may be switched off for your business or outside your permissions. An administrator can change either.

Returns are where sloppy record-keeping becomes expensive, because a return touches the goods, the money and the customer’s trust at the same time.

A return anchors on the document that sold the goods

A customer return references either the invoice or the order the goods went out on, and one of the two is required.

The invoice is the normal anchor: it makes the refund reconcilable and tells you the price the goods actually sold at. A return against an order is for the case where goods are coming back before an invoice was ever raised.

Either way, the point is that a return is never free-floating. Goods come back from a specific sale, at a specific price, and that is what makes the refund arithmetic checkable.

A return is a sequence, not a status

A return moves through events: received, inspected, restocked or scrapped, or cancelled.

Inspection can carry notes, and scrapping carries a reason. That sequence matters because the interesting question is rarely “was it returned” — it is “did we get sellable stock back, or did we take a loss, and why”.

   received  ->  inspected  ->  restocked   goods back on the shelf
                          \->  scrapped    a loss, with a reason

Restocked and scrapped are different outcomes and must not be recorded as the same thing. Restocking puts saleable goods back into your figures. Scrapping does not, and a business that restocks everything by reflex will have inventory that does not exist and a margin it cannot explain.

Write the reason

Scrapped items with reasons are how you find out that one supplier’s packaging fails in transit, or that a product is being returned for the same fault every week.

“Damaged” is a start. “Damaged — carton crushed, third this month from the same supplier” is worth money.

The module lives with Inventory

Worth flagging because it surprises people: customer returns is enabled alongside Inventory, not Sales. If your business sells but does not track stock, you may not have it — which is consistent, since the interesting half of a return is what happens to the goods.

Try it