In cash on delivery, returns are the cost that decides your margin. Every refused doorstep, failed attempt, and unreachable customer sends a parcel back toward your warehouse β and if nobody verifies what actually came back, the stock silently disappears from your books. The Returns Center at https://v2.egrow.com/centers/returns is where your team checks every returned parcel item by item, restocks what can be resold, writes off what is damaged, and refunds the customer when needed β so your inventory and your finances match what is physically on the shelf. It is one of the Order Centers, the focused queues each stage of your pipeline flows through.
Before you begin
- Your carriers should be updating delivery statuses, either automatically through an integration or manually from the Delivery Center β that is what moves orders into the return stages this center reads from.
- Your order stages should be mapped to eGrow's global stages, so returning orders land in Return Requested, Return In Transit, and Quality Control.
- To restock returned units into the right warehouse, your orders should carry a stock location.
How a return reaches the center
The banner at the top of the page shows the four return-related global stages the queue draws from. A typical journey looks like this: a delivery fails or the customer refuses the parcel in the Delivery Center, the order moves to Return Requested, then to Return In Transit while the carrier carries it back, and finally to Quality Control once it arrives at your warehouse and is waiting to be opened and inspected. The Returns Center gathers orders in all of these stages into a single worklist.
Reading the dashboard
Five stat cards summarize your return load at a glance:
- Return Requested β orders flagged for return that the carrier has not yet moved.
- Return In Transit β parcels currently on their way back to you.
- Quality Control β parcels that arrived and are waiting to be checked.
- Checked β returns your team has already processed.
- Damaged Items β units marked as damaged during checking.
Below the cards, tabs filter the queue: All (the three pending stages combined), Return Requested, Return In Transit, Quality Control, and Checked. Use the refresh button in the header to reload the queue and the stats at any time.
Step 1: Find the returned parcel
The left column is the queue, 20 orders per page. Search by order number, tracking number, or internal ID and press Enter, or open the funnel button to filter by date range. Each row shows the product thumbnail (with a +N badge when the order has more items), the customer's name and phone, the order number, the total, a colored pill with the order's pipeline stage, the carrier, and the order date. When the queue is empty, the center shows "All caught up β no returns awaiting processing."
Tip: the search field is wired for a barcode scanner. Scan the tracking label on the physical parcel and the center fills the search and opens the first matching order automatically β the fastest way to work through a pile of returned boxes.
Step 2: Sort every returned unit
Select an order and the processing panel opens on the right, headed by the order name, its pipeline stage, its stock location, and an Order Details button that opens the full order in a side panel. For every line item you see the thumbnail, variant, unit price, the ordered quantity, and the current stock count β which previews what the stock will be including the units you are about to restock.
Each item has three counters, and every ordered unit must be assigned to exactly one of them:
- To Available β the unit came back in good condition; it is restocked as sellable inventory.
- To Damaged β the unit came back damaged; it is moved to damaged inventory instead of sellable stock.
- Not Returned β the customer kept the unit; no inventory change is made, only the financial adjustment.
The panel warns you when units remain unassigned or when the counts exceed the ordered quantity, and the Confirm Return button stays disabled until every unit on every line is accounted for. For orders where everything came back in one state, the Move all to Available and Move all to Damaged buttons assign all remaining units in one click.
Step 3: Decide on the refund
At the bottom of the panel, the refund amount is calculated automatically: every unit you marked as available or damaged counts toward it at its unit price, while units the customer kept do not. Tick Create refund transaction if money should actually go back to the customer β common for prepaid orders, rare for COD parcels that were simply refused before payment.
Important: when the checkbox is ticked, confirming the return immediately records a completed Refund transaction titled "Return refund" on the order. Leave it unticked for refused COD parcels where no money ever changed hands.
Step 4: Confirm and verify
Press Confirm Return. The order is marked as checked, the queue and stats refresh, and the order moves to the Checked tab. There it shows a read-only summary with a green Checked badge and a per-item breakdown β how many units went to available, how many to damaged, and how many were not returned β so anyone can audit later exactly what was decided for each parcel.
Where the stock goes next
Units sent To Available return to sellable stock at the order's location, ready to be sold again β including through the Relaunch Center, which offers returned orders to new customers. If you automate stock movements, see Using Inventory Rules to keep restocking consistent with the rest of your pipeline. Units sent To Damaged stay visible in the Damaged Items stat so you can track how much a bad carrier or a fragile product is really costing you.
Tip: use returns as a signal. A customer who refuses parcels repeatedly can be added to your blocked customers list, so their future orders are flagged before you ship again β the queue and the order details always show you exactly who the customer behind a return is.
Exchanges are handled separately
The Returns Center is for parcels coming back for good. When a delivered customer wants a different item β another size, color, or product β you keep the sale instead: the Exchange Center creates a replacement order linked to the original and sends a new parcel out. Once the swapped-out item physically comes back with the carrier, it lands here in the Returns Center to be checked and restocked like any other return.