Returns, RTO & COD

The unglamorous half of D2C, built in because this is where money leaks.

Returns & replacements

Started from the order page, two flavours:

• Return: a reverse pickup from the customer back to you.
• Replacement: a new outbound parcel (same items or corrected ones), created as a proper clone order that flows through the normal pick → pack → ship pipeline, flagged so packers know it's a replacement.

For each one the system creates the Shiprocket shipment, tracks it, and gives your warehouse a receiving step: when the parcel arrives, record its condition: good (restocks automatically if you've enabled that) or damaged (goes to the damaged bucket, never back into sellable stock). Reasons are captured at creation, so you can later see why things come back.

RTO (return to origin)

COD reality: some parcels never get delivered and come back. The system:

• tracks which shipments have flipped to RTO status via the courier feed,
• gives the warehouse an RTO scan-in: scan each returned parcel as it arrives, so "the courier says 14 are coming back" reconciles against "we've physically received 9",
• restocks good units / flags damaged ones, same as returns.

No more mystery cartons piling up unscanned.

NDR (non-delivery reports)

When a courier can't deliver ("address issue", "customer unavailable"), the order shows it, and support logs follow-up updates (called the customer, asked for re-attempt) right on the order page, so the story stays in one place. The actual re-attempt/RTO action buttons stay in Shiprocket's panel, which does that job well.

COD reconciliation

Couriers collect cash for you and remit it later, in lumps. The COD screen matches those remittances against delivered COD orders, so you always know:

• how much COD is delivered but not yet remitted,
• which orders a given remittance (UTR) actually covered,
• what's aging suspiciously long.

Extra payments a customer makes after ordering (a payment link for an add-on, a COD-to-prepaid conversion) can be logged on the order so the numbers still tie out.

The theme

Every parcel and every rupee is either accounted for or on a list that says it isn't yet. Nothing relies on someone remembering.