The Ultimate edition of Interspire StoreSuite contains built in RMA (Return Materials Authorization) support which allows your customers to submit requests to return items to your store and for you to approve, deny or refund those items. Today I'll be giving a bit of an overview of how this works as well as the store credits functionality which ties in alongside the returns system.

Once an order has been marked as completed, customers then have the ability to return one or more items on their order for reasons you specify. To submit a return request the customer simply logs in to their account and clicks the "Completed Orders" link. Next to each completed order the customer has the ability to click "Return Item(s)" which will take them to a page where they can submit their return request for that order.

When submitting a return request the customer has the ability to select which products (and the quantity) from their order they'd like to submit for return as well as reason, requested action and enter any additional comments on why they’re returning the items.


On successful submission of return request, the customer is then given instructions on how to return the items to your store:


We've also added in the ability for customers to track the status of their current and past returns. Simply clicking on "Return Requests" in the "Your Account" area will take the customer to a list of all of their current and previous returns on your store where they can see the items they returned as well as the status of each return.


Store administrators can then manage the return requests via a central interface in the administration panel. The interface works much like the order management interface. You can quickly change the status of a return in the drop down and you can view all of the information (return reason, action and enter staff comments) by clicking the plus sign next to each return. You can also create different views (as demonstrated by Mitch) and perform advanced searches within the returns history.


We understand that not everyone has the need for a returns system or if they do, that they may have different requirements to another one of our customers. The system has been designed to be customisable so you can configure the returns system how you need it to for your store.
There are various settings we've implemented to allow you to tailor the returns system to your needs:

• Returns can globally be enabled or disabled
• Return instructions, to be shown to customers after they've submitted a return request, can be completely customised
• The list of return reasons and return actions can be easily changed
• There is the ability to enable or disable the ability for staff to offer store credits for a return
• Various notification and confirmation emails for returns can be enabled or disabled – you can choose to notify yourself of a new return, send a confirmation message to the customer and even notify the customer when the status of their return has changed.

As you can see, the returns system is quite flexible but we've taken things a step further and as I previously mentioned, you can issue store credits to customers. We've had a few requests to implement such a feature in to StoreSuite and I'm happy to announce it’ll be in the 1.0 release.

When "Issue Store Credit" is clicked for a specific return, the customer's account is credited for the total of the items in that return request. A customer then has the ability to shop on the site and use their available store credit to make purchases:


As you can see, if the customer does not have enough store credit in their account they also need to select a standard payment provider to pay the remaining balance. The customer is then taken through the checkout process as normal and through the payment provider for the balance left on the order.

Additionally, staff can also manually adjust the level of credit in a customer's account via the administration panel. The changes are saved inline via the use of AJAX so the credit can quickly be updated for one or more customers without reloading the page.


I hope you enjoy these two new features in StoreSuite – they both powerful features which are essential for a lot of stores to perform their day to day business. Stay tuned for another blog post in a few days with an overview of the gift certificates system I've also been implementing.