Spread six / Left leaf / A line coming back
The return route and the inspection at the end of it
A return is an order running backwards, and it needs the same two things an order needs: a reference, and somebody who knows what is coming.
“Hi, the drawer runners are wrong, they’re the 400 and I need the 450. Box not opened apart from looking. Can I send them back and get the right ones, I’ve still got the box they came in.”
— second message, next day: “posted them this morning”Three useful facts in four sentences: what is coming back, what condition it is in, and that the original outer is being reused. The second message is the problem. Goods already in transit with no return reference on or in the parcel arrive here as an unidentified box, and an unidentified box cannot be matched to an order except by opening it and guessing.
So the first thing the desk does with a return is issue a reference and ask for it to be written on the outside and put in with the goods. Not because of paperwork: because the lane the parcel arrives in is the same lane deliveries arrive in, and the only thing that separates a return from a delivery at that moment is what is written on the box.
The period in which goods can be returned is the one stated at the point of sale, in the terms the order was placed under. This leaf is about what happens to goods that are coming back, not about how long anyone has to send them.
Spread six / Right leaf / The return lane
What the return route is
Seven stages, and the first of them is a piece of writing rather than a movement. A parcel that arrives without a reference is not on this route at all: it is an unidentified box in a lane, and the work of the next hour is finding out whose it was.
- Reference issued. It is written against the original order record, never on its own, so that the return and the order it came from are one file.
- Goods arrive in the return lane, which is marked off from goods-in. Nothing from that lane is put away, counted or sold until it has been through the bench.
- Booked in against the reference on the day it arrives. A return sitting unbooked is stock that the figures think is still with the customer.
- Inspection. Opened at the bench against the original pick note and check sheet, so that what came back can be read against what went out.
- Graded, which is the decision that routes everything afterwards.
- Stock adjusted, with the grade and the reference on the adjustment, so a count that later disagrees can be traced to a specific return rather than to a mystery.
- Return record closed and the outcome written to the order record.
Right leaf / The decision at the bench
Four grades, four destinations
| Grade | What it means | Where the units go |
|---|---|---|
| Resaleable | Unused, complete, with its own packaging intact enough to go out again as it is | Back to its own bay, counted in like a delivery |
| Repack | Unused and complete, but the retail packaging is damaged or missing | Quarantine shelf until it is repacked, then back to the bay |
| Quarantine | Opened, used, incomplete, or anything the bench is not certain about | Quarantine shelf, with the reference on the unit, pending a decision |
| Write-off | Damaged beyond use, or returned as faulty and confirmed as such at the bench | Off the stock figure the same day, with the reason recorded |
The grade is given by somebody looking at the goods, not by the customer’s description of them, and the two are recorded separately. “Said unopened” and “found unopened” are different facts and both are worth keeping; where they disagree repeatedly against one range, that is a signal about the listing rather than about the customers.
Nothing goes back to a bay with a return reference still attached to it. A unit on a pick face carrying a reference will eventually be picked, boxed and sent out with somebody else’s return number inside the parcel.
Right leaf / What returns are read for
Reading returns as information
Every return record carries a reason in the customer’s words and a grade in the bench’s. Read down a range, those two columns answer a question nothing else on the floor can: whether the goods are being described properly.
A line that comes back repeatedly as wrong size, graded resaleable every time, is not a quality problem and not a picking problem. It is a description that lets somebody order the wrong thing while believing they have ordered the right one, and the fix is on the ranges spread, not here.
A line that comes back damaged and graded write-off is a packing question, and it goes back to the bench with the outer kept, because how the box failed is usually visible on the box.