correct precedure for dealing with returns

[Clive.Aspen]

If an order has been shipped, invoice printed and the order is completed..

and then an item gets returned for a refund.. maybe one item on an order or the whole order.. what is the correct precedure for dealing with it within actinic?

Is the item 'unshipped' and a new invoice produced ?
Or is actinic ignored and the refund just done outside the actinic system ?

Sorry if this is obvious... couldnt see any info on 'returns' in the actinic help

[Jan]

There is no official returns functionality in Actinic, so you can process it as you wish.

If you use stock control, you should mark the item as cancelled (and maybe unshipped to get it returned into stock and add a new payment for the refunded amount.

This will keep your orders / stock levels and sales figures correct.

Regards,

[Clive.Aspen]

Thanks Jan,

What would the correct precedure be.. in terms of the law / tax man.. ?

IF I chose to link to sage.. would a refund unshipped and refunded in actinic weeks after the sale, get updated to sage?

I want to make sure I'll be doing the right thing.

[Jan]

I can see what you are saying but I'm really sorry, I don't know what the tax man would want or say.

With regards to sage transfer, if you don't update the order then I can't see why it wouldn't be transferred, if you do, I don't know what would happen, you will have to run a test and see, sorry I couldn't be more helpful than that.

[John Hart]

As Jan said, you may need to try to determine what works best for your business. To some extent this will depend on the frequency of returns and how timely the returns are. For example, a clothing store will typically have a much higher volume of returns than a book store.

Handling the returns in Actinic has a lot of advantages. Again, echoing Jan, the return is basically an Unship and Cancellation of the item. This will restore the stock position, however you may need to adjust if the item is not fit to add back into stock. Actinic will revalue the order but you may need to make further manual adjustments. For example, if the item was part of a buy one get one half price discount, you need to make sure it the half price one that is refunded not the full price one. You might also want to adjust the shipping cost according to your returns policy.

The next thing to do is make a refund payment to the customer. If you are using Actinic Payments this is simplicity itself, a one-click operation. But even if you don't use Actinic Payments, the refund payment can still be recorded against the order.

Changing the order will mean that you can re-produce the invoice as a replacement for the original. This is where things can become a little less straightforward. There is no problem if the order and the return happen in the same VAT accounting period as the replacement invoice is used. The problem arises if the VAT has already been reported for the original order and then the return happens later. This is not easy to handle within Actinic and records of such events are best kept elsewhere.

If you use Sage Link, the problem still does not go away. Depending on your Link settings (use auto-increment invoice number or not), re-transferring an order from Actinic will either create a brand new Sage invoice without deleting the old one (which is clearly wrong) or simply replace the previous one, which is better but has the same limitations as in Actinic.

If returns straddling VAT periods are going to be a frequent issue, it may make sense to use Actinic for the process side of returns (stock handling, payment refunding) and in parallel use something else (e.g. accounting software or simply a spreadsheet) to record the credit notes.

I am sorry this hasn't given you a totally clear answer on how you should do things but I hope it has made you aware of the issues and that you can find a procedure that best suits your business.

[Clive.Aspen]

Thanks John,

I am slowly getting a clearer picture of how to deal correctly with returns