Managing the Logistics of Product Returns

Most businesses know their return rate but few know the true cost of each return. AskBiz calculates the fully-loaded return cost:

Return cost components:

• Return postage (if you provide a prepaid label): £2.50–£8.00 per return
• Return processing labour (receiving, inspecting, restocking or writing off): £3–£10 per return
• Restocking fee or write-off: 0% if resaleable, 20–100% of product cost if damaged
• Customer refund: the original order value returned to the customer
• Lost future revenue: the customer who returns may not repurchase

For a product selling at £35 with a 15% return rate, if each return costs £12 to process, returns add £1.80 to the effective cost per unit sold — a meaningful margin impact.

Go to Operations → Returns → Cost Analysis to see your return cost per order and per product.

Return processing speed affects cash flow (refunds owed to customers) and inventory availability (returned items back in stock for resale).

AskBiz tracks:

• Return to receipt: days from customer return shipment to warehouse receipt
• Receipt to inspection: days from receipt to inspection completion
• Inspection to refund: days from inspection to refund issued (or credit note for B2B)
• Inspection to restock: days from inspection to the item being available for resale again

For businesses with returns peaks (post-Christmas fashion returns, January sale returns), AskBiz shows the processing backlog in real time — allowing you to scale processing capacity before the backlog creates a customer service problem.

What happens to a returned item determines how much of its value is recovered. AskBiz tracks return disposition rates:

• Resold as new: item is in perfect condition, restocked, and resold at full price — best outcome
• Resold as refurbished/open box: item is functional but cannot be sold as new — sold at a discount
• Donated or recycled: cannot be resold — write-off at cost
• Destroyed: damaged beyond use — write-off at cost plus disposal cost

Go to Operations → Returns → Disposition Report to see what % of returned items in each category fall into each disposition type. Products with high write-off rates need either better packaging to prevent damage in transit, or a returns policy change (e.g. requiring items to be in original packaging).

Manual returns processing (customer emails, back-and-forth communication, manual label generation) is expensive. Self-service returns portals reduce the cost per return by 40–60% by automating the returns initiation process.

AskBiz integrates with returns portal tools (Loop Returns, Return Prime, Narvar) to provide a connected view of returns status in your operations dashboard. Customers initiate returns via the portal; AskBiz tracks the return through the processing pipeline automatically.

For Shopify stores, AskBiz can also trigger return workflows via Shopify's native returns functionality without a third-party tool.