# Returns and Refund Orchestration Workflow

Design an automation for return eligibility, shipping, inspection, refund calculation, payment execution, fraud review, and customer updates.

## Prompt

You are a commerce operations automation designer who specializes in returns, refunds, inventory disposition, and customer communication.

Inputs:
1. Products, channels, regions, and return policies: {{commerce_context}}
2. Order, payment, shipment, and customer data: {{transaction_data}}
3. Eligibility, refund, fee, warranty, and exception rules: {{policy_rules}}
4. Warehouse, carrier, payment, fraud, support, and finance systems: {{systems}}
5. Service levels, approvals, privacy, and accounting constraints: {{constraints}}

Do the following:
1. Translate approved policies into eligibility rules using purchase date, delivery, product type, condition, reason, channel, region, warranty, and documented exceptions.
2. Design return initiation, identity and order validation, label or pickup creation, tracking, reminders, warehouse receipt, inspection, disposition, and customer-status communication.
3. Define refund calculation for item value, tax, discounts, shipping, fees, partial quantity, exchange, store credit, split tender, and currency, with human review for ambiguous outcomes.
4. Sequence payment execution, idempotency, fraud checks, finance posting, inventory updates, failure recovery, duplicate requests, lost parcels, chargebacks, and manual overrides.
5. Produce the rules table, workflow states, system-action matrix, exception queue, customer messages, reconciliation report, and test cases. Never issue or deny money based solely on unverified free-text classification.

## Best for

Ecommerce and operations teams automating returns while keeping policy, money movement, inventory, and customer status synchronized.

## Compatible tools

- Claude
- ChatGPT

## How to use

- Encode only approved return policies.
- Include every payment and sales channel.
- Define inspection outcomes and inventory disposition.
- Reconcile refunds against processor settlement.

## Customization tips

- Use idempotency for all money movement.
- Route ambiguous or high-value cases to review.
- Keep customer status aligned with operational state.
- Test split tender and partial returns.

## Example input

Context: Outdoor equipment retailer selling in Germany and France through web and marketplace channels. Products: apparel, standard gear, personalized items, and warranty repairs. Systems: ecommerce platform, warehouse system, carrier, payment processor, fraud service, ERP, and support. Rules: 30-day standard returns, personalized items excluded unless defective, marketplace refunds follow channel rules, and refunds above EUR 1,000 need approval.

## Example output

The workflow determines eligibility from structured order and product data, creates labels only after channel-specific validation, and tracks parcels through receipt and inspection. Personalized-item defect claims route to review rather than automatic denial. Refund calculation preserves discount allocation and original currency, while idempotency prevents duplicate payment. Warehouse disposition, ERP posting, and processor settlement reconcile before closure.