Field notes
A return can credit a different SKU than the one that came back
The portal listed the order. The warehouse received a different size. The refund followed the portal, not the bin.
The buyer started a return from the order page and selected the line they believed they had received. Warehouse receiving scanned a different size of the same style. The refund instruction had already gone to the payment provider against the portal line.
Restock updated the wrong available-to-sell figure. The original size remained ‘returned’ in the order history. A later buyer was sold a size that was not on the shelf.
After-sale paths are easy to leave out of a storefront audit because they do not sit on the homepage. They still move money. When we review returns we sample the triangle: portal request, receiving scan, refund or credit. If any corner is missing, we say so rather than infer it from policy text.
If you offer exchanges, add a fourth corner. Exchanges are where we most often find a new order created without closing the old capture cleanly.