Refund & Restock Credit Approval

The problem this kills

Returns credits are where money quietly leaks. Customer service promises a refund, the warehouse hasn't actually seen the box yet, finance issues the credit anyway, and now you've paid for goods you may never get back. Or the restocking fee gets waived for one person and charged to the next, because the "policy" lives in three people's heads and a stale email thread. Meanwhile the same RMA gets credited twice because two people worked the queue.

The fix isn't another spreadsheet. It's a single workspace where a credit can only be approved after the warehouse confirms the goods are received and dispositioned, where the refund and restocking fee are computed the same way every single time, and where nobody can issue the same credit twice.

What you'll build

A small, login-protected web app that:

• Pulls in your dispositioned returns (from a CSV or Google Sheet today, or your system later) and links each one to its original order.
• Computes the refund from your pricing rules, subtracts the restocking fee per your policy, and flags the exceptions (damaged, missing parts, late returns, non-returnable items).
• Blocks any credit whose goods are not yet confirmed received and dispositioned - the money simply can't move until the warehouse side is true.
• Puts every credit behind a finance approval gate: the tool drafts the credit, a finance approver reviews the math, and only an approval writes it.
• Exports a clean credit-memo CSV in the exact columns your accounting system expects, and notifies customer service when a credit is approved.

What's inside the Implementation Plan

This plan is written to be pasted straight into Claude Code. You don't write code - you answer questions and copy prompts.

It opens by interviewing you about your business - your return process, who works it, the systems and sheets you use, your real field names and RMA/SKU conventions, your typical and peak return volumes, your exact refund and restocking-fee rules, and your messy edge cases. It reads back a short tailored spec, you confirm it, and only then does it build - so the tool fits your returns desk, not a generic template.

Inside you'll find:

• The full discovery interview, with the exact questions to answer.
• A step-by-step build: data model, return-to-order linking, refund/restock computation, the approval gate, audit trail, CSV export, and CS notifications.
• Ready-to-copy prompts for every step.
• A "No API yet?" fallback so you can ship today using a Google Sheet or CSV and export a clean credit-memo CSV.
• A verification checklist so you know it actually works.

The governance it includes (this is the point)

This isn't a toy. The plan builds in the controls finance will actually ask about:

• Login so only your team can open the tool.
• Row-level security so people only ever see their own organization's data.
• A hard human-in-the-loop approval gate - the AI drafts the credit, a finance approver reviews and approves, and only then is it committed.
• A complete audit trail: who linked, who computed, who approved, and when.
• Duplicate guards so the same RMA + credit can't be processed twice.
• A standing rule: no credit until the goods are confirmed received and dispositioned.

Who it's for

Finance and accounts-receivable teams, returns coordinators, and customer service leads who own the returns-to-credit handoff - especially anyone who's been burned by a credit issued before the box came back, or a restocking fee applied inconsistently.

You don't need to be a developer. If you can answer questions about how your returns desk works and paste a prompt, you can build this. You've got this - paste the first prompt and let the interview tailor the rest.