Manage Sales Returns
Compensating a customer who is dissatisfied with an item that a company has sold them is a necessary and important transaction between a company and its customer. The faster and more accurately a company carries out the activities involved in a return process, the more likely the company is to foster the customer's perception of good customer service.
Typically, the salesperson responsible for the interface with certain customers would also be the contact person to receive complaints from those customers about the items sold. In other cases, a company may have a dedicated person(s) specifically dealing with returns; for example, employees in the customer service department.
Irrespective of the industry in which that company operates, the typical customer-oriented return handling process includes the following tasks:
Determine a compensation agreement with the customer.
Shipping a replacement item(s) to the customer (if replacement is part of the compensation agreement).
Crediting the customer (either by means of a credit for physically returned items or a sales allowance where the customer is not required to physically return the items).
Shipping a repaired item(s) to the customer (if repair is a part of a compensation agreement).
Follow-up on the return status (in case of customer inquiries).
Related to the customer-facing process, there are a number of internal handling tasks:
Receiving returned items and inspecting them (if relevant).
Applying restock charges.
Shipping returned items to the vendor for repair.
Ensuring the accurate inventory value of the returned items.
The following table describes a sequence of tasks, with links to the topics that describe them. These tasks are listed in the order in which they are generally performed.
| To | See |
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Learn about all the business requirements and steps involved in returns management, such as compensation agreements and inventory value considerations. |
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Get an overview of different ways to process sales returns. |
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Create the sales return order. |
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Fill the sales return order lines with a function to select and automatically reverse posted sales invoice lines or shipment lines. |
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Ensure that items are returned to inventory at the same unit cost that was connected to the original sales entry. |
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Charge a restock fee to the customer to receive non-defective items. |
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Compensate your customer for an item that you sold by giving them a deduction against the original sales price. |
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Have all relevant sales return documents created automatically, such as a purchase return order, a replacement purchase order, or a new sales order. |
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Have the vendor compensate you for a purchased item by replacing the item. |
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Return several items to a vendor, which are covered by different purchase return orders. |
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Choose, for example, to post the sales return as received first to update inventory availability and later post it as invoiced to update inventory valuation and to create a posted sales credit memo. |
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Ensure that the originally shipped serial/lot numbers are reversed in the sales return process. |
Handling Item Tracking Lines when Getting for Invoices/Credit Memos |
Determine where a returned defective serial/lot number originates from and if the defective lot is sold on other orders. |
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Undo the quantity posting of a return receipt where the sales return document (sales credit memo) has not yet been invoiced. |