When you cancel part of a paid order or return items a customer already received, Orders & Inventory can charge a cancellation fee or restocking fee for each unit. The merchandise item controls whether a fee applies and how much it costs, so you do not calculate or enter the fee yourself. This article explains when fees are charged, why a cancellation or return can fail because of a fee, and how to waive a restocking fee on one returned line.
What This Does
Orders & Inventory charges a cancellation fee for each unit you cancel, and a restocking fee for each unit you return. Both fees come from the product setup. A merchandise item can have cancellation fees, restocking fees, or both turned on, and each fee has its own per-unit amount. If the product does not have a fee turned on, cancelling or returning it does not add that fee.
Orders & Inventory takes the fee from money the customer already paid. The fee reduces the refund or credit calculated for the cancellation or return, instead of being billed separately. If the fee is larger than the remaining refund, the cancellation or return can still leave the customer owing money on the order.
If the order uses a currency other than your Rhythm account's base currency, the fee uses the order currency when exchange rates between the two currencies have been loaded. If there is no rate for that currency pair, Orders & Inventory refuses the cancellation or return, even when the fee would calculate to nothing. When a product has different cancellation or restocking fee amounts for different currencies, Orders & Inventory uses the amount set for the order's currency.
Before You Begin
Prerequisites
- The merchandise item must have cancellation fees, restocking fees, or both turned on, with a fee amount set, before any fee applies.
- Your Rhythm account's Orders & Inventory settings must include a cancellation fee product and a restocking fee product before you process a cancellation or return that owes either fee. If either required product is missing, Orders & Inventory refuses the whole cancellation or return.
Why a Cancellation or Return Can Fail Because of a Fee
When a cancelled or returned line owes a fee and your store does not have the matching fee product configured, Orders & Inventory refuses the entire cancellation or return, not just the fee. The message tells you which configuration is missing. Lines that do not owe a fee, and lines whose fee was waived, do not cause this refusal on their own.
Warning
Ask an implementer or administrator to set the cancellation fee product and restocking fee product in your store's settings before you rely on fees. Until both are configured, any cancellation or return that would owe a fee fails outright.
A cancellation or return on a foreign-currency order can also fail with a currency conversion error. This error is not always about a missing exchange rate; it can come from the exchange-rate service's own configuration. If you see a currency conversion error when cancelling or returning a foreign-currency order, contact Support. Correcting that configuration resolves it.
Waive a Restocking Fee on a Returned Line
- Open the order and choose Return Items. You can also find it under Order Options.
- In the return table, find the line you're returning. If the item charges a restocking fee, a Waive Fees? checkbox appears in that row.
- Check the box to skip the restocking fee for that line only.
- Finish the rest of the return as usual and choose Process Return.
Result
If you can check the box, the line is returned without a restocking fee. Waiving the fee applies only to that one line; there is no control to waive a fee for the whole return at once.
Warning
For merchandise, this checkbox appears but is currently always disabled. Waiving a restocking fee depends on a merchandise-specific setting that is different from the one the checkbox checks, so staff cannot waive a merchandise item's restocking fee from the Console today, even when the box is visible in the row.
There is no confirmed control on the Cancel Order dialog for waiving a cancellation fee on a cancelled line. If you need a cancellation fee waived, contact Rhythm Support.
Variants
- A line with no fee turned on. Cancelling or returning it never adds a fee line, regardless of any waiver setting.
- A fee larger than the refund. If the fee is more than what remains to refund on the line, the cancellation or return still completes, and the customer's account can show a balance owed.