Returns & Refunds by Channel Tracker Spreadsheet
A spreadsheet that prices what a return really costs you: the refund, the postage back, the handling time, the value the goods lost, and the commission you never get back.
You refund the money, and that is the part everybody counts. Then you pay the postage back, somebody spends twenty minutes on it, the goods are worth less than they were, and on some channels the commission you paid to sell it is never returned either. No sales report anywhere prices any of that.
What is in it
- Setup — one number, your channels, and what happens to returned goods.
- Sales — 1,600 rows, one per order line.
- Returns — 400 rows, one per return, each matched to its order by reference.
- By Channel — margin before returns sitting next to margin after them.
- By Reason and By Product — why it came back, what that reason costs, and what is left afterwards.
- Overview — the whole year on one screen, plus a Start Here tab saying where to type.
Who it is for
Anybody who sends physical things out and sometimes gets them back: makers, online shops, wholesalers, shop floors, trade counters. No marketplace is named anywhere in the file — the channels are empty slots you name yourself, each with its own commission and its own answer to whether that commission comes back with the goods.
The worked example
A worked year is filled in: $229,668 of sales at a 54.5% margin, with 183 returns and $21,779 refunded, a return rate on value of 9.5%. The refund is only part of it — $1,394 of return postage, $1,797 of handling time and $1,910 of commission never refunded, against $6,156 of goods value recovered. The returns cost $18,304 in all, or $100.02 each.
That takes the margin from 54.5% to 46.5%, a loss of 8.0 points. One channel charging 15% commission it keeps when the goods come back is 21% of the sales and 61% of what the returns cost: it looks like a 43.1% margin before returns and 19.6% after. The same business’s own website goes from 56.4% to 51.4%.
How it works
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install.
The download has two workbooks: one with the example above already filled in, so you can see what every column expects, and the same file completely blank for your own figures. A plain-English guide comes as a PDF. Order on WhatsApp — $9
Orders are taken on WhatsApp: message me and I’ll send the payment details, then the files as soon as the payment is confirmed.
A look inside the file
Questions people actually ask
How do I work out what a return actually costs me?
You add the refund to the return postage, the handling time, the value the goods lost on the way back and any commission the channel keeps when it refunds. In the worked year 183 returns refunded $21,779 but really cost $18,304 — an average of $100.02 a return — taking the margin from 54.5% to 46.5%, a loss of 8.0 points. Put another way: for every $100 sold, $9.48 came back and $7.97 of it never came back as value.
Does it name any particular marketplace, and does it work for a service business?
No channel is named anywhere in the file — the channels are empty slots you name yourself, with your own commission rate and your own refund rule: a marketplace, your own site, the shop floor, the phone, trade customers. For services it works partly: refunds and cancellations fit, but the goods-recovery side does not, because it is built for somebody who sends physical things out and sometimes gets them back. The single Yes or No against each channel — does the commission come back with the goods? — matters more on a 25% return rate than the commission rate itself.
What if I do not know what a return is worth once it is back, and I sell hundreds of orders a week?
Start with a guess in Setup and change it later — you set the recovery share once per outcome (unopened, scrapped, sold as seconds, repaired and resold, sent back to the maker) and every tab in the file re-prices itself. If you sell hundreds of orders a week, summarise: one row per channel per product per week works perfectly well, because the file does not care whether a row is one order or fifty. A return finds its sale by the order reference in any format, as long as the same one appears on both tabs, and every return carries a Found the order? check.
Does it work in Google Sheets or do I need Excel?
Both — it is built as .xlsx for Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, and it loads into Google Sheets through File then Import then Upload. LibreOffice opens it too. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install and no subscription: you download the file and it is yours. It holds 1,600 sales rows and 400 return rows across eight linked tabs.
Does it connect to my shop or marketplace account?
No — nothing syncs and nothing logs in, and I never ask for a password, a shop account or a marketplace login. It is also not stock control, not an order management system and not accounting, bookkeeping or VAT software. It will not stop anything coming back; it tells you what each return really cost, which channel is quietly taking the margin, and which products earn their shelf space once the postage has been paid twice.
Need it built around your business?
This one assumes physical goods sold through channels that charge a commission. If yours is different — returns that come back to a different warehouse than they shipped from, exchanges rather than refunds, or products sold in packs where only part of the pack comes back — I can build the same arithmetic around how your returns actually move.
All other templates are listed on the Excel & Google Sheets Templates page.