Last updated: Oct 14, 2026 at 9:31AM
When a customer starts a return on a marketplace, Osello pulls it in, walks it through acceptance, receipt, and refund, and records the outcome in your Shopify store so your books stay straight.
Where returns show up
Osello checks your marketplaces for new and updated returns about every 15 minutes. A return appears in the Returns card on its order's page, and the order carries a Return in progress badge while the return is open. Click the return to open its own page with the returned items, quantities, refund amount, and current status.
Walking a return through
The return's actions menu offers each step as it becomes relevant:
- Accept — agree to take the return. The marketplace is told you'll process the refund, and the customer sends the items back.
- Mark as received — confirm the returned items have physically arrived at your warehouse. The marketplace is notified, and if you restock returns in Shopify, the items go back into stock. This stays available after the marketplace reports its own receipt, and even after a refund, because only your confirmation puts items back on your shelf.
- Refuse — decline the return on the marketplace. The customer is not refunded.
- Refund — the final step: issue the refund and close the return on the marketplace.
- Cancel return — close out a return that's no longer going ahead.
Some marketplaces handle parts of this on their side — accepting the return themselves, or confirming receipt at their own facility. Osello picks those changes up on its regular checks and moves the return's status forward automatically, so you only act on the steps that are actually yours. The return's Details panel shows who reported each step: the marketplace, your Shopify store, or the person on your team who did it in Osello. A receipt at a marketplace's own store location is recorded as the marketplace's, and your warehouse's receipt as yours.
You can also do these steps in Shopify. Marking returned items as received or restocked on the Shopify return tells Osello you have them, and closing the return in Shopify closes it on the marketplace as well. Reopening a return in Shopify only reopens it there: marketplaces cannot take a return back once it is closed and a refund cannot be reversed, so Osello keeps the return as the marketplace has it and flags a sync issue on it to say so.
A few marketplaces pay the customer back before they finish closing the return on their end. When Osello sees that the marketplace has already refunded every item on a return, it marks the return Refunded and records the refund in Shopify right away, rather than waiting for the marketplace to catch up. A return can jump straight to Refunded this way, skipping the steps in between — the money has already moved, so there's nothing left for you to do. If only some of the items have been refunded, Osello waits until the rest are, so your Shopify order never shows a partial refund that doesn't match what the customer actually received.
How refunds are recorded
The marketplace collected the customer's payment, so the marketplace is the one that pays the customer back. Osello's job is to keep your records straight: when a return is refunded, Osello records the return and its refund on the matching order in your Shopify store.
If you've turned on the restock option in your Shopify integration settings, Osello also restocks the returned items in Shopify, but only once you have confirmed receipt or the return is closed. A refund on its own is not proof the goods are back: some marketplaces pay the customer before anything has shipped, so the refund is recorded in Shopify right away and the restock follows later. A marketplace saying it received the items does not count either, since that can mean the parcel reached one of the marketplace's own store locations rather than your warehouse.
When the marketplace closes the return, Osello closes the matching return in Shopify too, so Shopify shows it as returned rather than leaving it open.
On the order's page, refunded money shows up in the Details panel as a Refunded amount alongside the Net Total, and the order's status moves to Refunded (or Partially Refunded when only some items were refunded). The Net Total is the order total including tax, minus what was refunded. When the marketplace doesn't report how much it refunded, Osello estimates it from what the customer paid for the returned items, tax included.
Tax on refunds
The refund Osello records in Shopify matches what that Shopify order charged, which is not always what the marketplace refunded.
Most marketplaces report an order's sales tax only once the order ships, and that is after Osello has already created the order in Shopify. Osello does not go back and rewrite an order you may have already reconciled, so those orders stay in Shopify without tax. When a return comes in, the marketplace's refund covers the item plus the tax it collected, but Shopify only ever charged for the item. Refunding the tax too would take money off an order that never collected it, so Osello records the item amount and leaves the tax out.
The same goes for every order when Include Tax in Pushed Orders is turned off in your Shopify integration settings. Those orders reach Shopify without tax, so their refunds leave the tax out too. New Shopify connections start with this setting off.
Where the Shopify order does carry tax on the returned items, the refund includes the tax, matching the marketplace.
When tax doesn't divide evenly across units, for example 6.37 of tax on two units, the marketplace and Shopify can each put the odd cent on a different unit. Osello records the marketplace's amount, so once every item is refunded the Shopify order is refunded in full.
Either way the customer gets their full refund from the marketplace. The amount in Shopify reflects what Shopify charged, and Osello's own order page always shows the marketplace's full refund.
Return statuses at a glance
A typical return moves Pending Acceptance → Accepted → Received → Refunded. Returns you decline show Refused, and abandoned ones show Canceled. The status badge updates live while Osello is syncing a step, so you can watch a refund land without refreshing.