At some point, you’ll need to cancel an order from a customer. This can be for a variety of reasons, whether it’s at the customer’s request or you’re unable to fulfill that order. Before you proceed, you need to consider whether to cancel the order or if you need to issue a Return Merchandise Authorisation (RMA).
What action you should take depends on:
- If there have been any payments made; and
- If there are any items on the order that have been dispatched
What happens when an order is created?
When a transaction is created and either paid or the products have been dispatched, a record is created in the system against the customer account. These records are required for historical and auditing purposes.
When to Cancel an Order
The Cancel option is the best option only when there hasn’t been a payment made, and none of the items have been dispatched.
These situations occur when a sale has been created and placed on hold but never finalised. Until a sale is either paid or had products dispatched, the records against a customer account (or cash sale) won’t be created.
When to create a Return Merchandise Authorisation (RMA)
Once the sale has been paid or products dispatched, it’s best to create an RMA.
An RMA documents the process of returning a product to receive a refund, replacement, or repair. While some returns are required by law, you may have chosen to extend your Store Returns Policy beyond this to allow replacement, refund, or store credit for any reason.
Raising an RMA in Maropost Commerce Cloud allows you to create a reversal of any payment or inventory transactions created, which can then be converted into a refund or credit. Products are then returned to your available stock quantities, ready for your next customer.
RMAs also come in handy when only part of an order is being returned. Instead of canceling an entire order and creating a new one, you can select exactly which items and the quantity of those items are being returned.
More information on Creating and Processing an RMA can be found here.
Tip for remembering Cancel vs RMA
If you ever find yourself unsure whether you can simply mark the order as Cancelled or if you need an RMA, a handy rhyme to remember is “If they pay, or you send it away, raise an RMA”.
Let us know in the comments if this helps, or if there are any other parts of the Commerce Cloud you’d like to see a future tip on!
