Your customer visits your branded return portal at your Customer Return Portal URL. They enter their email address (or zip/postal code) and order number to look up their order.

If you've enabled gift returns, recipients can also start a return for a gift they received.

The portal shows all items from the order, split into eligible and ineligible. For each item they return, the customer selects a quantity, indicates whether the product has been used, chooses a return reason and any sub-reasons, and adds comments or photos where your settings require them.

Items outside the return window, already returned, or excluded by your eligibility rules appear as ineligible, with a note explaining why.

If you've enabled exchanges, the customer can swap their item for a different variant — size, color — of the same product.

If you've enabled Shop Now, the customer can shop new items from the collections you've chosen, using their return credit as payment. If the new items cost more, they pay the difference; if less, the remaining credit is issued through their chosen resolution.

Customers not exchanging or shopping choose how they'd like to be compensated:

The customer reviews a summary page showing their items and reasons, any exchange items, their editable ship-from address, and a financial breakdown — items value, fees, bonuses, and total. Your pre-submission return instructions appear here too.

If the customer owes anything, such as a label fee or restocking fee, they'll pay before submitting the return request. You control whether fees are deducted from the resolution or paid by credit card.

Once everything looks good, the customer clicks Submit Return.

For the screen-by-screen version of steps 1–5, see The Customer Return Portal.

The return lands in your Manual Review queue, where your team approves or declines it from the Onward dashboard.

If you've enabled auto-approve, eligible returns skip this step and are approved the moment they're submitted. If fraud risk is detected, the return goes to manual review regardless.

When a return is approved:

Which mode you're in is set by your return label provider. The return moves to Open status.

The customer packs their items and drops them off at a carrier's location using the provided label. By default, returns within the U.S. use USPS. International returns can be configured with any major carrier of your choice — see Preferred returns carrier and Allow Returns by Region.

Shipment tracking is automatic through ShipSidekick — you and the customer both see when the package is in transit and when it's delivered. For manual returns, you can add tracking information to the return, though manually entered tracking doesn't drive automations.

Labels can expire in as little as 14 days after creation, and customers receive reminder emails if they haven't shipped.

Processing issues the customer's resolution:

You can process returns manually from the return detail page, or use auto-process to trigger processing on a shipping event — label created, in transit, or delivered — with an optional delay for inspection.

Separately, auto-restock can return the items to your Shopify inventory on its own trigger — on delivery, on processing, or earlier.

The customer receives a final email confirming their return has been processed, with details of their refund, store credit, or exchange order. If you've set a BCC email address, your team is copied on return confirmation emails as well.