Your true return rate: the number Shopify gets wrong
Shopify buckets returns by the month they're processed and folds in order edits and cancellations. We tie every return to the month of the original sale, scoped to your return window, across Shopify and Amazon FBA.
Illustrative of a documented merchant report. Your numbers reflect your own store.
Return rate by SKU
Counted against the order month · your 45-day window
Returns cost this month
$18,240
+$2,100 vs April
True return rate
3.1%
sale-month cohorts
Refunds
$14,900
subtotal + tax
Return labels
$3,340
612 units back
| SKU | Product | Return rate | Refund $ | Returned | Top reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TSH-100-BLK-M | Essential Tee | 14.62% | $4,120 | 182 | Size / fit |
| BRH-200-STN-8 | Everyday Hoodie | 11.08% | $3,880 | 103 | Size / fit |
| JOG-300-BLK-L | Athletic Jogger | 9.35% | $2,540 | 98 | Too long |
| CAP-400-OLV-OS | Dad Cap | 6.21% | $1,210 | 74 | Changed mind |
| TSH-101-WHT-M | Essential Tee | 4.18% | $980 | 61 | Changed mind |
Shopify's built-in return rate can badly mislead
Shopify Analytics counts order edits and cancellations as returns and buckets them by the month they're processed, not the month the sale happened. In a Shopify Community thread, one merchant documented a reported return rate of 25% when the real figure was closer to 3%. Renaming the metric to “Sales reversals” didn't change how it's counted.
If you price, forecast, or judge a product launch off that number, you're working from fiction. Returns Intelligence recomputes it honestly from the same Shopify data you already have.
Same store, same month
Reversals counted as returns, wrong month
Real returns, attributed to the sale month
Illustrative of the documented gap. Your numbers reflect your own store.
Every return tied to the sale that caused it
Plenty of dashboards can filter by order date. Returns Intelligence is built entirely around making your true return rate the number you run the business on.
Counted against the sale, not the calendar
Every return is tied to the month the order was placed, so a January sale returned in March lands in January, where it belongs. That's your true return rate, not a number distorted by order edits and cancellations.
Scoped to your return window
Set your real policy window (30, 45, 60, or 90 days) and every rate honors it. No fixed buckets pretending a 60-day return didn't happen.
Your history, backfilled
We pull your past orders and returns when you connect, back to your plan's history window, so you see accurate rates from day one instead of waiting months to accumulate them.
Native Shopify returns, no portal migration
Works directly with Shopify's built-in returns. No returns portal to install, no checkout to change, no customer flow to migrate.
A rate is a symptom. The dollars are the decision.
Returns Intelligence puts a number on it: what returns cost you this period (refunds plus return-label spend) and exactly which SKUs are draining it. A 40% return rate on a $5 trinket matters far less than 12% on your $220 bestseller. We rank by dollars, so you fix what's actually leaking margin.
- Store-wide “Returns cost you $X this period”: refunds + labels, as a share of sales.
- “SKUs costing you the most” ranked by dollars lost, not just rate.
- Refunds shown in your store currency, per SKU and per return reason.
Returns cost · May 2026
$18,240
3.8% of sales · +$2,100 vs April
Top drain this month
Essential Tee (BLK/M): $4,120 refunded, 14.6% rate. Top reason: size.
Amazon FBA returns, in the same dashboard
Sell on Shopify and Amazon? The Amazon FBA analytics data source tracks return rate by ASIN and SKU for your FBA orders and returns, on the same sale-month cohort basis as your Shopify reporting. Coverage is FBA-only today, using Selling Partner API credentials you supply.
See Amazon FBA returns analyticsShopify
Orders, returns, and refunds matched to SKUs automatically.
Amazon FBA analytics data source
Return rate by ASIN and SKU for FBA orders and returns, via your own Selling Partner API credentials.
Selling on Amazon too? Bring FBA returns into the same dashboard.
Return rate by ASIN and SKU for your FBA orders and returns, built on the Amazon Selling Partner API with credentials you supply. Part of the Scale plan.
Built to earn a merchant's trust
Reporting without customer identity
Shopify dashboard reporting does not require customer names, email, phone, or address fields. Connected return providers may supply customer identifiers or contact fields in raw operational payloads; those fields are restricted, retained only as documented, and included in privacy deletion workflows.
Read-only access
We read your orders, returns, and refunds to calculate rates. We never write to your store or change anything.
Your connection stays encrypted
Shopify tokens and vendor credentials are encrypted with AES-256-GCM and stay server-side. They're never exposed to the browser.
Uninstall any time
Deletion, uninstall cleanup, support access, and retention are spelled out in plain English in our public policies.
See your true return rate
Returns Intelligence backfills your history to your plan's window and shows you what returns are really costing you: by SKU, by reason, by month.