Introduction

In this article, you will be able to understand how a return is managed in Onport. This process can start from the moment an order is raised until the return is fully processed by the Vendor. 

Order flow

1. The customer places an order in the marketplace's store.
2. The order syncs to Onport and is routed to the correct dropship provider, creating a dropship purchase and labels.
3. The order syncs to the vendor's store or the vendor portal and is shipped to the customer.

Return flow

1.1. The end customer can request a return via the marketplace’s preferred method, for example, by getting in touch with the customer service team.

1.2. The customer raises a return with the marketplace and uses the pre-printed return label to contact the carrier for pick-up or to leave the parcel at a drop-off point.

2. You will need to go to Onport, search for the order number under the Sales section, select the item(s) to return and click “Cancel/Return” - this will create a return under the Returns/Cancellations section.

3.1. In the return, you will need to select the amount to return or cancel, select the return reason* (optional) provided by the customer and approve the return:

3.2. If needed, you can turn on the setting “automatically accept returns” to skip this step. This can be set under each Dropship Provider settings from the Orders tab > Approval for returns > Automatically approve.

4. You will then send the return request to the vendor portal for the vendor to process.

❗️It is not possible to send a return directly to the vendor's e-commerce platform, so if the vendor wants the return information to be reflected in their store, they'd have to manually initiate it there.

5. The vendor receives the package and marks the return as "received".

6. You refund the customer in your e-commerce platform.

❗️(Advanced Plan only) The commission refund will be handled in the next payout to the vendor - depending on the "Number of days to delay payment" the marketplace has set for that vendor under the dropship provider settings > Payment setup tab.

❗️To create the return reasons, you can go to Setup > Returns and add the return reasons at the bottom of the page.

Return status explained

1) RAISED: The return syncs to the marketplace's Onport account and can be found under the Returns/Cancellations section:

2) PENDING APPROVAL: The marketplace needs to approve or reject the return (which can be done manually or automatically - see 3.2. in the Return flow section above):

2.1) APPROVED: once approved by the marketplace, this is the next stage while waiting for the return to be shipped.

3) SHIPPED: As an optional step, the marketplace can mark the return as "received" on behalf of the vendor once they are informed the vendor has processed the return:

4) COMPLETE: The return has been processed successfully:

🔎 If you're looking to understand how to handle item exchanges, check this article.

🔎 If you want to know how to refund a vendor payout, please read this article.