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From Returns to Revenue

A Practical Guide on Optimizing Your Ecommerce Operations After the Sale

Learn how leading brands are rethinking returns. This guide gives you practical strategies to reduce costs, improve customer experience, and turn returns into a growth lever.

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A practical playbook for navigating returns in 2025

Returns can feel like a burden but handled right they unlock opportunities to boost efficiency, loyalty, and revenue. This guide explores the full impact of returns on your operations, from inventory accuracy and cash flow to customer satisfaction, and shows how a better process can drive growth. You’ll learn how to spot the hidden costs of returns, streamline your workflows, and use returns data to make smarter decisions across your business.

About the guide

Why returns deserve a second look

Returns affect more than refunds. When managed well, they improve customer loyalty, streamline operations, and help recover lost value.

Returns are part of the product experience

Today’s customers expect returns to be fast, easy, and transparent. A smooth process can turn a potential churn moment into a loyalty boost. This guide explores why returns are just as important as the sale itself and how getting them right builds trust and repeat business.

The hidden costs that slow you down

Returns affect more than your bottom line. They create inventory blind spots, tie up cash flow, and lead to time-consuming manual work across teams. This guide breaks down where those costs hide and how to eliminate the inefficiencies that hold your operations back.

Make returns part of your core workflow

When returns are disconnected from inventory, sales, or accounting, you lose visibility and control. This guide shows how to build a connected return process that syncs with the rest of your systems, giving you real-time data, fewer errors, and faster turnaround times.

Katana Cloud Inventory

Katana helps you go from returns chaos to returns clarity

Whether you’re juggling ecommerce, manufacturing, or both, Katana connects the dots between your sales, warehouse, and accounting — making every return a smooth, traceable step in your workflow.

Getting your products to customers faster

Katana supports your workflows no matter your industry with the features and seamless integrations you need to manage your business how you want.

Inventory management

Get real-time inventory insights of all your items and optimize your inventory levels based on demand.

  • Inventory management
  • Reorder points
  • End-to-end traceability
  • Multilocation support
  • Multichannel inventory
  • Product availability

Purchase management

Issue purchase orders for supplies and materials in Katana that are delivered directly to your warehouse or contract manufacturer.

  • Order management
  • Reorder points
  • Contract manufacturing
  • Flexible unit purchasing
  • Multicurrency
  • Purchasing insights

Sales order management

Consolidate all your online and offline sales channels in one view with AI-powered automation for order creation and real-time sales insights.

  • Kits and bundles
  • Traceability
  • Partial shipping and invoicing
  • AI-powered assistant
  • Sales insights
  • Sell goods and services
  • Multicurrency
  • Ecommerce integrations

Planning and forecasting

Make better data-driven decisions as Katana automates your inventory planning — using historical data to predict future demand.

  • Demand planning and forecasting
  • Flexible inventory control
  • Smart replenishment planning

Production management

Optimize your production and decrease lead times based on your bill of materials and operations data.

  • Real-time planning
  • Shop Floor App
  • Manufacturing costs
  • MTS and MTO workflows
  • BOM and subassemblies
  • Ingredient availability

Cloud accounting

Get your inventory and accounting data in sync to better understand your business’s finances.

  • Accounting integrations
  • Accurate costing
  • Sales order management
  • Katana Insights
  • Inventory management
  • Purchase order management

Warehouse management

Our Warehouse add-on provides all the tools and real-time insights to improve picking routes and manage receiving, mobile scanning, and printing — all from a mobile device. 

  • Bin locations
  • Traceability
  • Label printing
  • Barcode scanning
  • Stocktake
  • Warehouse app

Get visibility over your sales and stock

Wave goodbye to uncertainty with Katana Cloud Inventory — AI-powered for total inventory control