Refund / Returns / Exchanges Products - Can't find a way to get this to work.

[timmilward]

Hello all, 

So we were about to take the plunge and switch our retail store to Shopify POS, and bought a set of hardware to test things out.  However, we've hit a stumbling block with refunds / returns and exchanges.

Our brick and mortar store has between 300 - 1000 transactions per day, (yes I know we perhaps shouldn't be looking at shopify pos, but it seemed the quickets solution to integrate the store with the website which has been doing well with local pickup and delivery).

I can't find any way to refund or exchange a product without tracking down an order that relates to it.  We guarantee many products for 12 months, so there'll be plenty of refunds where no order exists on shopify.

Day 1 of going live with shopify POS, we'll have made no sales, but people can arrive with a receipt wanting a refund for something they bought on the old system the day before.

It's not at all unusual for someone to arrive with no receipt, they may have a bank statement, or some other form of proof of purchase.

-- My questions are: --

What workflow do your staff follow to refund or exchange a product?  How do you resolve the issue if you can't find the original sale (whether that be pre-shopify or just because they haven't brought the receipt with them).

I'm slightly blown away that this is an issue - I've never come across a POS system where it was compulsory to find a historical order to issue a refund or exchange.  Of course, sensibly most would need a managers authorisation to do, but the feature is there.

I did find a post here from 2014 saying shopify were working on a solution, but it doesn't seem to have materialised.

Another post from last year had a reply from a shopify guru suggesting either importing all transactions from the old system into shopify or recording details as a draft order.  I can't imagine importing millions of transactions being workable nor can I see how recording details as draft orders working as that can't possibly balance the cash or card payments.

Hopefully I'm mistaken and just missing something really obvious - I can't believe something so simple is missing!

[hstb]

You're not overlooking something. Every return or exchange requires a previous purchase. Tears

[AmandaPGD]

I've been trying to figure this out for our store too - we just recently switched to Shopify, so we're running into this same issue of not having an original sale to link a refund/exchange to.  Right now with the COVID-19 situation we're not accepting returns anyway (thankfully), but when we do start taking them again I know this is going to be a pain.  Hoping someone can share some tricks on how to do a work-around.  And hopefully Shopify will get around to resolving this - accepting returns/exchanges without a receipt is a pretty basic thing for retail stores.

[SpencerCran]

This is not ideal, but couldn't you Remove Cash for in store returns (make a note), and issue a manual gift card credit for online returns?

Spencer

[timmilward]

The only solution we've found that solved part of our issue was we discovered we could sell a custom gift card and override the price to 0, in essence this gave the customer a store credit.  Still no way to correctly refund cash or card transactions, though.

[Will_Cervarich]

You can create a manual payment method like "Credit from old POS" or "Customer Service" or "Returned Merchandise" and instruct your cashiers to use this when they can't find an initial order. You'll have to manually adjust inventory after this, but at least it's smooth for the customer.

[Roostcollection]

I've been complaining about this since May of last year. We have 75-100 sales per day. Gift shop. Many returns without receipts. Paid by cash. No order to attach the sale to. If you can find the order, Beware the original purchaser will be notified the item was returned. Super embarrassing and not professional.

POS Pro $89 will let you do exchanges. But only one per transaction. Sucks

Our work around. We have to fill out a paper (small) we keep in drawer for the total return amount. Then purchase a gift card ($2 cost) for the amount. At closing we have to treat that paper as cash then adjust our books and inventory. Shopify fails.

We are looking at new plateforms because of this.

Shopify help is the black hole. I call every week. We'll pass this on to our developers that don't exist. But thank you for your monthly payment.

Now I call and ask for my monthly fee back. Last month they credited my account.

I suggest you do the same. money talks!!!!!

[Sheila_Spitza]

@Will_Cervarich can you elaborate more on this? How do you ring the item? And how do you ultimately give money back to the customer?

[Will_Cervarich]

Hi @Sheila_Spitza sure thing! It's certainly not ideal, but this at least allows you to apply Store Credit without a linked transaction. It does not allow you to refund money back to the customer. You'd create whatever manual tender method you want in POS. Instruct staff to use that method to "pay for" gift cards or exchanges. Then reconcile transactions with that payment method via your bookkeeping and manually adjust inventory to reflect the returned item is back in stock.

Again, Shopify is really dropping the ball here (along with terrible support for Multiple Exchanges and Merging Customers...) but maybe this workaround can bridge the gap between now and whenever Shopify gets their act together. 🤞

[Will_Cervarich]

@Sheila_Spitza sorry, a point of clarification: the amount of the manual tender method which is applied here would be equal to the price of the returned item(s), so your staff would need to know how much the initial thing cost and also hope (or know) that the customer actually paid full price for the item(s). So if I brought back a stuffed animal that you sell for $25, but you can't find my initial transaction and I want a gift basket that costs $37, you'd ring up the gift basket for $37, pay for $25 of it with tender method = "Credit from unlinked Transaction", and I'd pay the balance of $12. Or if I wanted a $15 gift basket instead, you'd ring up $15 GB + $10 gift certificate and pay for that whole order with $25 of "Credit from unlinked Transaction."