Refunds and Returns
What you have refunded, which products drive it, and why the figure is dated differently from your orders.
This screen shows what you have paid back to customers: how much, on which products, and how it is trending.
Refunds are dated when they happened, not when the order was placed
This is the thing people notice first, and it is deliberate.
A refund processed this month on an order from three months ago belongs to this month. That is when the money left your account, so that is where it should count.
The consequence is that a period can show more refunds than its orders would suggest, and there is nothing wrong when it does. If you want to know how much of January's revenue eventually came back, that is a different question from what this screen answers.
Cancelled orders
A refund against a cancelled order still counts. The money genuinely left your account.
The cancelled order itself is not counted as a sale, so it does not appear in the revenue those refunds are measured against. Cancelling and refunding is common on subscription stores, and dropping those refunds entirely would understate the total by exactly that amount.
Refunds and returns are not the same thing
A refund is money going back. A return is stock coming back. They often happen together, but not always: a partial refund for a damaged item usually has nothing coming back, and a return may be exchanged rather than refunded.
Aplon counts them separately, which is why your two numbers can differ.
What to do with it
Look at the product breakdown first. A single product driving most of your refunds is a sizing, description or quality problem you can fix, and it is usually cheaper to fix than to absorb.
Related
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