Return rules

Turn returns on, set the return window, final-sale products, automatic approval, the restocking fee and the instructions your customers get.

Settings → Return rules is the policy your storefront and your Returns screen follow. It decides whether customers can ask to send goods back at all, for how long after delivery, which products are excluded, and what you keep when you refund. How you then work a request is in Handle returns and exchanges.

Seeing the page needs the View Returns permission and changing it needs Manage Returns. The Owner and a Manager have both by default. A Staff member and a Viewer do not. See Team and permissions.

Turn returns on: why customers cannot ask for a return

Returns are off until you turn them on and save. A store that never saved this page accepts no returns, and a customer who tries is told the store does not accept returns online. If a customer says they cannot find the return button, or the request is refused, check this switch first.

The switch only stops customers. You can still open a return yourself for a customer from their order, and when you do you can accept a late or final-sale return (see Open a return for a customer).

The return window

Days. From 1 to 365. A customer can ask for a return until that many days have passed.
Counted from. Choose delivery or the order date. With delivery, the window starts on the day the order was delivered. When Brainerce does not know the delivery date it falls back to the date the order was marked delivered, then the shipping date, then the order date, so a return window never stays open forever because a carrier never reported a delivery.
An order that has not shipped cannot be returned. The window does not start until the order has shipped.
A customer cannot ask after the window closes. You still can, by opening the return yourself.

Automatic approval

With Auto-approve on, a request that passes the rules is approved the moment the customer sends it: they get the approval email with your instructions at once, and it never sits in Requested waiting for you. With it off, every request waits for you to approve or decline it.

Auto-approve only approves. It never refunds anything and it never records goods as received: you still count what arrives and close the return yourself.

Reasons the customer can pick

The customer chooses a reason when they ask. The list starts with six: defective or damaged, wrong item received, not as described, doesn't fit, changed my mind and other. You can change the wording and the list (up to 20 reasons). Because a list is always there, a customer must pick a reason. The reason is recorded on the return so you can see why goods come back.

Final-sale products: what cannot be returned

Mark products as final sale by choosing them one by one, by category or by tag. A customer cannot return a line whose product matches any of them, and the request is refused with the reason final sale.

Gift cards, digital downloads and bundles are never returnable, whatever you set here.
A unit that was already refunded or is already in another open return cannot be returned again.
Final sale only stops the customer. When you open a return yourself you can accept a final-sale product.

The restocking fee

Type a percentage (0 to 100) that Brainerce keeps out of a refund when you close a return with a refund. Leave it empty for no fee.

The percentage applies to the value of the goods that arrived, not to shipping.
You can overrule it on each return when you close it: type an amount, or type 0 to waive it.
It applies to refunds only. An exchange has no fee.
It is not shown to the customer as a rule in advance unless you say so in your instructions or on your own returns page.

Instructions for the customer

A text of up to 2000 characters that goes out in the approval email, for example the address to send the goods to and how to pack them. Brainerce does not create a return label, so this text is how the customer learns where and how to send things. A customer who returns goods without an approval is not covered by these instructions.

What changing the rules does

A change applies to new requests. Returns that already exist keep going under the rules they were approved under.
It never refunds or restocks anything by itself.
The change is recorded in your store's activity log.

What the rules do not cover

No return shipping labels and no prepaid postage.
No store credit: the refund goes back to the original payment.
No automatic replacement orders for an exchange: you send the replacement yourself.
No guest returns: only a signed-in customer can ask. A guest has to write to you, and you open the return.
No photos with a request.
Your own returns policy page is separate. This page does not write the policy text your customers read on your storefront. Write that under Content (see Content pages and blog) and let the storefront bot know it under Store knowledge.