How can I efficiently process product exchanges on Debut?

Shopify Discussion
21

Hi, again @BLKPNTS1 .

It’s great to hear you have found a workaround that’s working for you - albeit that it requires more work from you at your end. Please don’t get me wrong; I totally agree that a return and exchange feature is something that makes sense. I’m advocating for this change on your behalf, but it is something that requires a bit of work to implement into the platform.

As for a public feature request platform, our community forums are the current solution to that. Community Forums are a great way to moderate content and we are able to pull trends from all posts we receive. Coupled with our 24/7 support, all feedback is recorded and passed on where everything is grouped into topics. From there, the team for each relevant suggestion will look into a solution.

I do appreciate the feedback your passing on. I am sorry I wasn’t able to resolve it on this occasion, but please know your feedback has been recorded and if we are in a position to add this feature, I’ll let you know.

If you’d like to discuss this further let me know and I’ll send you an email. Cheers!

22

Hey @Miles ,
The 3rd party apps always end up requiring more work to ensure that the stock is correctly reflected in my accounting system, and just as much in shopify, I have tried many over the years since joining in 2014.

Also the public community forums are fantastic as is the support but there is a lot of duplication forum discussions when asking for the same features over and over again or there is the opposite - a 38 pg request asking for stackable discounts, so @Jake211 idea of a location to vote on possible features would be great.

23

Hi Miles,

is there any update on this topic? I have a customer wanting to exchange for a different item.

thanks.

24

Hi, @Hannahstrunk !

To create an exchange of products for online sales, you can edit a customers order to remove and add products. You can learn about editing orders here. Below, I’ve outlined the steps you would need to take to use order editing to exchange an item along with some considerations you’ll need to be aware of.

Before you start editing orders, learn more about the possible impacts and decide if you want to edit orders in your store. Editing orders can affect the following areas in your store:

  • Apps
  • Discounts
  • Shipping
  • Fulfillment services
  • Payments

You can create test orders to see if editing orders work with your store.

  1. From your Shopify Admin, head over to Orders and click the order you’d like to edit.
  2. Click “edit”.
  3. In the Add product section, enter the name of the product that you want to add to the order, or click Browse to view a list of your store’s products and collections.
  4. Select the individual products or variants that you want to add to the order.
  5. Click “Add”.
  6. Under the item that you want to remove, click Remove item. If you don’t want to return the item to inventory, then uncheck Restock item. Items that you remove are automatically restocked to their original location.
  7. After you finish editing the order, review and update the order.

If the new item is less than the original order, you’ll be able to refund the difference to the customer. If it costs more you can charge the customer again, or discount the new item to bring the total price to the original amount. Under the new item that you want to discount, click Apply discount. You can only apply discounts to new products and custom items that you add to the order.

As you’re not able to edit an order that has been fulfilled you’ll need to unfulfill the order first in order to make changes. You can unfulfill certain products or the whole order. Orders can also only be edited within 60 days of being placed.

If you exchange an item using the above method instead of refunding the order and asking a customer to place a new order, your customer will need to arrange their own return shipping as well.

I hope this helps, but if you have any questions, please let me know.

25

I am also interested in this process as I offer free exchange for sizing issues etc.

I can use the existing refund process and then create an order and mark it as paid, but again, this should all be in the one process rather than return then reorder.

It would be as simple as having an exchange button next to the refund button that then opens another tab to add products in, and the difference in cost is calculated, and then if (for example) $9.95 is the balance, it is either invoiced or refunded. all to save money going in and out of Shopify and waiting for funds to clear as payouts, and fees as well.

This also eliminates the issues with discounts etc, if the initial product was purchased at discount, then the item is no longer on sale, that discount is lost.

Can you please update this thread as to when this feature will become available.

Thanks

ALT Active

1 Like
26

This has been an ongoing issue for years now and it seems that shopify slowly removes one feature at the time so they can bill us more.

You used to be able to exchange products using the POS app, not ideal, but at least you were able to just straight-up process a product exchange for something as simple as “It’s to small, can I please exchange for a size XL”, without jumping through a ton of hoops. Then Shopify updated their POS app and decided this feature is only available in the pro version which is $89 a month.

Or there are apps for that… which charge anywhere between $9 to $100 a month for something that I argue is one of the most basic functions an online store should support. At the rate at which Shopify is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if submitting an order is becomes an “additional” feature for which you have to pay extra.

So please, take the request to be able to process an exchange (to a larger/smaller size or whatever) to your product managers and let them know this is one of the most basic functions any online retailer performs. And let your PMM’s know that they can’t charge for everything, or better said there is a limit. Cross that line and it might blow up in your face without recourse for reconciliation.

The fact that Shopify forces me into paying extra for a very basic function pisses me off enough to consider moving on and using a different platform to build out my website. @Shopify_77 Don’t push your luck! I might just be one person, but I know that a lot of people are extremely pissed off about this very issue (even though shopify made quite an effort to delete all the complaints from the help forum).

The workaround to issue a $0 refund on the existing order and then creating a $0 (100% discount) order to send and process the exchange item creates a very interesting tax situation as far as I can tell. Cu’z you’ll be reporting all the exchanged items as a discount on your gross sales.

You sold one pant for $50, they got returned to be exchanged for a larger size. You refund $0 on order #1 (So you still have your $50). You now create a new order to send the larger size for $50, but you discount the $50 (since you got the money from order #1 you don’t care that it is a 100% discount). But as far as taxes are concerned you sold $100 worth of stuff, even if you discounted $50.

Gross sales = $100

Discounts = $50

Net sales = $50

Even though your gross sales was only $50 to begin with, but because of that $50, but 100% discount order, you have $100 gross sales now.

Please someone correct me if I am wrong.

1 Like
27

Hi Miles - So what’s the best way to exchange an item - I’ve posted this elsewhere as well, and the Shopify staffer responding there has asked us NOT to unfulfil and edit orders.We can’t sell a product at a 100% discount after refunding the old one the tax rate for our product in our region is based on value. Under a INR 1000, it’s 5%. Over INR 1000 it’s 12%. So what’s the way out for us?

28

Any update on just being able to have a “-1” as a qty so we can quite simply “-1” then “+1” .
This will eliminate

  • having to edit an previous order which most likely will not filter through to accounting or fulfillment centers
  • return at 0.00, and sell at 0.00, playing all sorts of havoc on our profit margin per line item and taxes
  • manually adjust inventory
  • a ton of extra manual work that is really disproportionate to the simple exchange a size issue
  • it would also allow better tracking to where we may have sizing issues, are people always going up of down in a certain style.
29

Not as far as I know. I go back to my original statement that as long as @Shopify_77 can milk us for “features” they will. Work is being done on my end investigating to move to a different platform. Soon enough @Shopify will charge you to log on to the UI or offer a third party app for it.

They keep removing more and more of the basic e-commerce functions only to charge you more.