ReturnsIQ user guide

Manage return requests, review risk signals and take action in Shopify. Features available to you depend on your plan, settings and connected services. Risk scores, photo checks, recommendations and carbon figures are aids to review; they do not guarantee a fraud decision, refund outcome or reduction in returns.

Set up your store

Open ReturnsIQ in Shopify admin and follow Onboarding: Welcome, Store analysis, AI configuration, Customer experience, Integrations, then Review & launch.

1. Review your return rules and approval thresholds. Automatic approval changes a return's status; it does not automatically issue a cash refund.
2. In Settings, enter the return address and connect your own Shippo or EasyPost account if you want generated labels. Choose manual labels otherwise.
3. Create a Returns page. The dashboard and onboarding offer Create Returns page; you can also use Online Store → Pages.
4. Open the theme editor for that page's template. Add the ReturnsIQ Portal app block and save. Adding a page alone does not install the portal block.
5. Set Settings → Branding → Returns page path, for example /pages/returns, so customer status links lead to the right page. Check the published page.

Portal detection updates when the page is loaded. It does not prove that every step of a return has been tested. Place a development-store test request before relying on the customer journey.

Dashboard and navigation

The dashboard shows open returns, recent return volume, flagged risk, generated insights and an attention queue. Empty or unavailable data is not a guarantee of no risk. Refresh available insights from the dashboard. The capability cards show plan and preference availability, rather than proof that every engine ran.

Use the navigation and dashboard tool links to reach Returns, Policies, Fraud, At-risk orders, Save the sale, Intelligence, Disposition, Carrier claims, Sustainability, Customers, Analytics, Copilot, Settings, Connections, API keys, Billing and Growth Services.

Customer return portal

Customers enter the order number and order email. After a successful lookup they can see existing returns, check status or select eligible items and a reason for a new request. The portal supports photo uploads (up to five images per return, 10 MB per image), progress, available labels and shipment tracking.

Keep the customer's email link private. An email status link shows progress and tracking; customers may need to confirm their order details to access the label. Available alternatives can include bonus store credit or a keep-it refund on eligible plans. Accepting an offer follows its specific flow; declining keeps the return in the normal process. Refund arrival depends on the payment provider.

To stop displaying the portal, remove its block from the published theme. To stop the product fit surface, remove the separate ReturnsIQ Fit Guide block from product templates. The saved badge-visibility switches currently do not change the portal; removing the block is the available way to stop that surface.

Work a return

Use Returns to filter by status or risk and sort the list. Open a return to see items, customer notes, photo checks, risk reasons, recommended outcome and history. Use Create return to look up an order on a customer's behalf. The return allowance still applies. Some search controls have implementation limitations; use status/risk filters and the return details to confirm results.

Approve, request a photo or reject as appropriate. On a paid plan, approval can attempt to buy a carrier label when credentials, addresses and provider settings are ready. Check that the label actually exists. Approval and refund are separate actions. Avoid clicking approval repeatedly if a carrier request is still pending.

Record tracking and choose whether to email the customer. Mark the return received when the item arrives. The audit page records actions and decisions; it is reached from the return detail. Fraud feedback records whether the risk decision was correct and contributes training data.

Refund, store credit and exchange

Issue refund requests a Shopify refund to the original payment method. Check the amount, currency and any restocking fee first. Confirm the transaction in Shopify if an error or timeout leaves the outcome unclear. An unknown payout blocks another payout; retrying the action first looks for the original refund, gift card or draft order in Shopify. If Shopify cannot confirm it, the attempt stays unknown and needs review. No second payout is submitted for that attempt.

If a rejection or cancellation commits before a payment is submitted, the app stops that unsent payment, including a fallback or bonus gift card. Shopper payouts also recheck status, pending photo verification and fraud review gates.

Keep-it refunds and refunds before receipt leave inventory unchanged. Marking a return Received restocks its physically received, resaleable units at the fulfilment location, including when you already paid the refund or store credit. Grant the app's inventory-write permission before using receipt restocking. If Shopify denies this permission, the receipt action shows an inventory review message; cash refunds can still proceed. Approve the updated permissions before retrying inventory restocking. Marking Received with no quantities supplied means all included return units; explicit empty or zero quantities mean nothing received. Store credit, including a shopper credit offer, still permits physical receipt. Cash and receipt stock reservations, including unconfirmed writes, share each location's fulfilled capacity across all returns for the order; partial receipts or split fulfilments need cumulative item quantities and a location through the admin status/tracking API. Missing or ambiguous allocations stay for review in the return history. Repeating Received does not pay again or restock twice. If an inventory response is lost, retrying receipt uses the same inventory intent within 23 hours; after that, review Shopify inventory history before any adjustment.

An external Shopify refund reduces this return's remaining balance only when its refunded items have unique ownership in that return. Fitting the quantities of a larger return does not establish ownership when another return shares the same order line. Shipping-only and zero-value refunds do not settle it. Unattributed refunds stay in the audit log and affected payouts require allocation review. Before a new payout the app reads Shopify's refund records under the return lock; an executed refund counts even if its webhook is delayed or lost. An unavailable Shopify read blocks submission. Cash preparation finishes before that final read. If Shopify corrects a known external refund down to zero, the corrected amount replaces the old paid balance. This also applies when only shipping money remains. An explicit inventory-only correction also clears obsolete paid money. Missing payment information still requires confirmation. The app preserves the refund reference and the total stock already moved, including multiple entries for the same item and location. For new app payouts, the recorded net settlement target includes any intentional partial amount and restocking fee. An old success notification cannot confirm a later pending correction. The app retains provider observations and waits for a fresh Shopify confirmation before completing that settlement or authorizing a bonus. Repeated notifications do not add another payment or stock movement. A pending notification received after that confirmation requires another fresh confirmation, even if Shopify's earlier reads returned the same values. Settlement uses the current confirmed app and external payments, including Shopify corrections. It does not depend on whether a correction arrives before or after the app confirms its payment. Matching the target completes settlement. A shortfall retains the remaining amount to settle; excess requires review and raises an alert. An unconfirmed payment or bonus remains pending and cannot complete the return. If a correction leaves the settlement short or excessive, the return is Under review. The retry message “Settlement needs review” shows the remaining amount or excess. Review that balance before deciding how to settle it; an ordinary retry sends no additional payment. Money already paid remains recorded, and credit bonuses are kept separate from the base settlement. Cash uses your original net request and the corrected remaining balance. If Shopify’s prepared capacity cannot cover the remaining payment, the action requires review without sending a short refund or completing the return. Review Shopify’s balance and retry when the remaining amount is available. Background monitoring also revisits settled returns independently of webhook arrival, so missing refund webhooks do not permanently hide excess payments. Newly corrected historical refund amounts can raise an excess alert even when the payment is old. Repeated unchanged scans use the same alert identity and do not renew the discovery window. Checks rotate through the oldest checked returns; a backlog can delay detection. Unavailable reads and ambiguous allocation require review. Historical ambiguous payment failures also require Shopify confirmation before a new payment. The dashboard totals successful external and app payouts; money monitors include split settlements and the bounded bonus on the credit portion. The shopper refund email states the executed amount for the payout being confirmed.

Issue store credit uses an order-linked Shopify store-credit refund for eligible orders. Cash and this base credit use the order's refund balance. The selected bonus is a separate bonus-only gift card, issued only after the base credit is confirmed. A failed or unconfirmed base refund never issues a bonus. Only confirmed value appears in the refund email; an unconfirmed bonus needs Shopify review before any retry. For orders paid in another currency, the app's return totals and bonus calculations remain in the shop currency, using Shopify's confirmed amount.

If the order has no customer, or Shopify explicitly says store-credit refunds are unsupported, the app uses a gift card for the base credit alone. These fallback payouts are recorded as uncapped_path; no bonus is issued. Gift cards cannot share Shopify's order refund cap, so coordinate outside refunds on that path. The monitor reports excess when discovered. Other API errors, currency errors and cap rejections do not trigger a gift-card fallback.

ReturnsIQ does not display or deliver gift-card codes. Arrange delivery through Shopify for fallback or bonus cards. An order-credit refund uses the customer's Shopify store-credit account. Confirm availability in Shopify before promising it to a shopper: development-store proof of the new provider cap is still pending. The app needs the updated store-credit transaction permission; your operator must release the app registration and obtain the grant first. If Shopify denies that permission, the merchant action shows approval instructions and issues no credit, fallback gift card or bonus. Shopper credit offers require merchant approval before they can proceed; another available refund option can still be chosen.

Exchange draft order asks for replacement variant IDs and quantities. It creates a full-price Shopify draft order; it does not automatically price an even exchange, send an invoice, complete or fulfil the order. Open the draft in Shopify, review the agreed price and complete the remaining steps there. A return label is handled separately.

Policies

The policy list, New policy and policy editor let you set conditions and the resulting approval, photo request, review or rejection. Rules have priorities. Review conditions and amounts before enabling a policy.

On Growth and above, the policy writer can propose rules from plain English. Review the proposal and any review-hold warning. Unsupported or ambiguous text can require manual review; generation does not silently authorize a broader rule. A/B portal experiments and PDF fraud-report export are not available.

Fraud and photo checks

Fraud scores include reasons and a risk band. Use thresholds and policy settings to decide which returns need review. Photo checks can use metadata, reuse signals and AI assistance; a high authenticity score is not proof that a photo or claim is true. Missing provider credentials or failed checks can reduce available signals.

The fraud page shows feedback accuracy and progress toward a training threshold. Reaching the label count does not prove a trained model is active. Initial return scoring uses rules; a trained model can supplement scheduled rescoring when the training job and data support it.

At-risk orders and buyer-remorse interventions

Growth adds predicted return-risk and a buyer-remorse queue. Review the order and available reassurance, size-guide or exchange intervention, then use the available action. These tools do not block checkout and do not guarantee fewer returns. Settings control the intervention threshold and email channel. Inspect the queue and delivery state when a message has not arrived.

Save the sale and recommendations

Growth adds outcome recommendations, available store-credit/keep-it offers, reason clustering and forecasts. Settings controls allowed offers and the maximum bonus. The Save the sale page shows recorded outcomes and guardrails. Acceptance is not a guarantee of retained revenue; keep-it is still a refund, and store-credit delivery needs the separate step described above.

Intelligence, Analytics and Copilot

Intelligence groups return reasons with suggested fixes and offers 30/60/90-day forecasts on Growth and above. Forecasts are estimates, especially with little history. Analytics shows returns, outcomes, risk and fraud-report data for the selected range. It provides an on-screen report, not a PDF export.

Copilot answers questions using available store data and displays the answer and supporting results. It is available from Starter with plan quotas. It cannot guarantee an answer when data or the service is unavailable.

Customers, Disposition and Carrier claims

Customers lists profiles and links to a customer's return history. Disposition includes warehouse photo capture and restocking recommendations on Enterprise. An assessment does not itself prove stock was returned to the right location.

Carrier claims is an Enterprise tool for composing damage claims and filing supported EasyPost claim paths. Unsupported paths need manual filing; the app does not guarantee carrier acceptance or payment. Label providers are Shippo/EasyPost, not separate direct integrations with each carrier.

Sustainability and fit recommendations

Sustainability uses return outcomes and carbon assumptions to estimate savings against a baseline. The dashboard, report and optional portal footer are not measured or independently audited emissions reports. Starter and above include this feature.

On Scale and above, add ReturnsIQ Fit Guide to product templates. It can show a recommendation for logged-in shoppers when sufficient fit information exists; other shoppers may see the configured logged-out text or no recommendation. There is no checkout or Customer Account extension.

Settings and Connections

Settings includes notification recipient, return address, carriers, branding, risk/approval preferences, thresholds, membership influence, connected-app risk context, offer guardrails, return windows, notifications and storefront badges. Available controls vary by plan. Admin branding preferences are stored, but visible accent and heading come from the theme block settings. The saved badge-visibility switches are not currently applied by the portal. The separate Vision LLM enable/strictness controls currently do not control photo-check execution; use the supported photo authenticity preference where available and contact support if you need assistance.

The Enterprise fraud network requires opt-in and configured network credentials. It shares hashed identifiers and risk signals. Opting out removes contributed network signals. Connections to other Kernvel apps have individual controls; installation of another app does not promise every connection is active.

The API keys screen supports test keys on Free, live read access on Starter, and write/webhook capabilities from Growth. Review scopes before creating a key, keep it private and revoke it when no longer needed. For data exports, contact support. SMS notifications are not available.

Plans and Billing

These are catalog prices verified from the app's pricing definitions. Existing subscriptions can retain a previous charge. Billing shows your current plan, interval, status and usage. The first paid subscription is eligible for a 14-day trial; repeat subscriptions do not receive another trial. Annual catalog billing is monthly price times ten, about 17% below twelve monthly charges.

Starter adds photo checks, labels, dynamic windows, full email templates, insights and Copilot. Growth adds the prevention, offer and intelligence tools described above. Scale adds fit guidance and connected fraud context. The app does not have a separate paid watermark-removal path. Enterprise adds network opt-in, warehouse restocking and carrier claims. Public API permissions use the separate tier rules described above.

When the return allowance is reached, creation is blocked; requests are not held in a next-month queue. Upgrade or wait for the next usage period. Existing return records remain available. Cancel immediately switches local entitlements to Free; verify the charge status in Shopify, especially after an error. Payment failure has a three-day grace path before demotion, subject to reconciliation.

Get help

Email support@kernvellabs.com with the return reference and a description of the issue. Do not email access tokens or gift-card codes. The Growth Services page lets you explore optional setup and optimization help; service bookings are separate from your app subscription.