Returns

Use returns when a customer sends goods back. Litestore helps you decide what goes back into stock and proposes a refund for what came back.

Litestore keeps returns, refund requests and chargebacks as separate records, and each one has its own state.

These are three different events. Goods come back, money goes out, or a bank reverses a payment, and these don't always happen together. A customer can send an item back and be refused a refund. You can pay a refund without anything being sent back. A chargeback can arrive with neither.

Because the records are separate, you can approve, reject or leave each one open on its own. Settling one never quietly changes another.

How each record is settled

A return starts as requested and then ends in one of these states:

approved
rejected
canceled

A refund request also ends in exactly one of those three states.

You don't move a chargeback through states yourself. Your payment provider writes it into the admin.

Litestore stores all of this in five records:

Return
ReturnItem
RefundRequest
RefundRequestItem
PaymentDispute

The item records let a return or a refund cover part of an order instead of all of it.

The key words are exactly one. A refund request ends as approved, rejected or canceled, and the store refuses to record a second outcome on top of the first.

Returns work the same way, because rejected and canceled are final. Nobody can re-approve a settled return into a second refund. A mis-click can't do it, two people working the queue at once can't do it, and someone reopening the return a month later can't do it either.

Raising a return

A return starts in one of two ways. Either the customer requests it, or you raise it against the order yourself.

Two rules limit what can go on a return:

• An order can have only one active return at a time.
• Only delivered units that haven't already been returned can go on it.

The second rule stops the same unit from being returned twice and refunded twice.

Approving a return doesn't restock it

Approving a return is a decision. Receiving it is a fact.

Litestore restocks the goods when you mark an approved return as received, not when you approve it. Until the goods are in your hands, an approved return doesn't change what you can sell.

This keeps your stock figures honest. If Litestore restocked at approval, every return that a customer never actually posted would leave you with units that don't exist.

When you mark the return as received, the units go back to the location the order shipped from. Each unit adds a movement to the stock ledger, which lets you explain later why the count changed.

What goes back into sellable stock

Not everything that comes back can be sold again.

If the condition you record for a returned line reads as any of these words, Litestore doesn't put it back into sellable stock:

damaged
used
broken
worn

Litestore also doesn't restock variants whose stock you don't track, because there is no count to add them to.

The condition you record when the goods arrive is more than paperwork. It decides whether each unit goes back into your sellable inventory.

Receiving a return proposes a refund

When you mark a return as received, Litestore raises a pending refund request for the value of the returned goods.

That request is only a proposal. Someone with the financial permission still has to approve it before any money moves.

Sometimes the order can't take a refund at that moment:

• It has an open chargeback.
• It has already been fully refunded.
• It already has a pending refund request.

In those cases the goods are still received, and Litestore skips the refund proposal. The goods are recorded as back and restocked as usual. A money problem on the order never stops you from receiving stock.

Because these are separate permissions, a support agent can handle the whole return without being able to release money. They take the goods in, restock them, and leave a request for someone else to settle.

The limit on refunds

The approved refunds on an order can never add up to more than the order total.

This isn't a check in the interface that someone could get around with enough clicks. The store itself refuses to record a refund that would take the order past what the customer was billed.

The limit holds across separate refunds and separate returns. It also holds when two people approve at the same moment, because Litestore checks the running total on the order rather than only the request in front of you.

How chargebacks are recorded

Litestore stores each chargeback against its order, together with its status, its amount and its evidence deadline.

You can assign a chargeback to someone on your team. An open dispute then has an owner, and nobody has to assume someone else is watching it.

When the totals disagree

Each order stores its totals. It also has a payment ledger that lists the money that actually moved.

These two should always agree. If they ever don't, the OrderMoneyDrift alarm lists the order.

With this alarm, the store tells you about a reconciliation problem as soon as it happens. You don't discover it at the end of the quarter.

Which record you need

Use a return when goods are coming back and you need to decide what goes back into stock.

Use a refund request when money needs to go back, whether or not anything was sent back. Receiving a return raises one for you. You can also raise one directly when nothing is being returned.

Use the chargeback record only to track a dispute that your provider has already opened. You can't open one here, and you don't resolve it here.

When both money and stock need to move, receive the goods first and settle the money second. The full path looks like this:

1. Start the return. The customer requests it, or you raise it against the order. An order can have only one active return at a time, and only delivered units that haven't already been returned can go on it.
2. Approve or reject it. When the goods arrive, mark the return as received. Litestore restocks what can be sold again and proposes a refund for the returned value.
3. Settle the refund once. An admin with the financial permission approves, rejects or cancels the refund request. Money and stock move together, and the order totals stay reconciled.

The rule behind all of it:

Each of these records settles exactly once, so the state you leave an order in is the state you will find it in.

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