We have also been battling with this one after wondering why on earth our returns rate seemed to be 40% higher than normal. We are a footwear company so get fairly high returns rates but many of these end up as exchanges for a different size which is done through our returns app - ReturnZap. It’s completely confounded our book keeper who usually double checks the reconciliations of Shopify Payouts v’s what’s in our Xero accounting software against the reports so she can see if anything might be amiss. Now we have no way of doing this, at least quickly and it’s costing my business a fortune in additional hours work.
It would surely be easy to have a ‘Returns’ column and ‘Refunds’ column in the reports - and it only be the Refunds that affect our Net Sales figures. That way Shopify can use the information for their own internal reporting but we still get real numbers for our accounting.
For accurate reporting in our accounts the ‘invoice’ is created at the date of order and payment from the customer and the ‘credit note’ for a refund is the point at when we have seen and checked the returned item and agreed to refund it.
The item is ONLY checked back on to stock once we have received, checked and refunded it so should not hit our accounts at all until that point.
Another thing is - how the hell are we supposed to do like for like comparisons to previous years - gah!!!
This is BEYOND a joke and I will be using my PR agency and LinkedIn to go to the business press about what an absolute joke it is.
If you are happy to, please respond with a quote of what this is costing your business in time and money so I can include it when I contact the press.