What are refunds?

Refunds are the money returned to customers — every credit note, summed by the date the refund happened, not the date of the original order. The total is a gross figure: it counts all refund events, whether the underlying order still counts as a sale (a partial refund) or has been excluded from revenue entirely (a fully refunded order).

Formula

refunds = Σ refund_amount_base   grouped by refund_date

Worked example

In March a store refunds €3,200: €1,900 of partial refunds on orders that remain sales, and €1,300 on orders fully refunded. The €1,900 offsets margin that was booked; the €1,300 does not — those orders already dropped out of net revenue and margin when their status changed, so subtracting their refunds again would count the same loss twice. Gross-refund reporting shows all €3,200; anything that nets refunds against margin must use only the €1,900.

How Saldo Metrics computes it

v_refund_detail serves one row per refund event from fact_refunds, joined to the originating order, customer country and — for line-level refunds — the product and brand. Amounts are EUR (refund_amount_base), converted at each refund's own date. The KPI sums all rows in the period; the detail widget lists them. Each row carries order_is_net_sale, the flag that separates the two refund kinds above — the cashflow forecast, for example, filters on it so a fully refunded order's outflow is not booked without its (already removed) inflow. Refunds date by refund_date, so a January order refunded in March is March's refund.

Why it matters

Refund volume is a quality signal wearing a finance costume: rising refunds usually mean product, sizing, delivery or expectation problems, and they show here weeks before they show in reviews. The per-product and per-country detail is what turns the total into something actionable — one SKU or one carrier lane often accounts for most of a spike.

Common mistakes

• Subtracting total refunds from net revenue. Fully refunded orders are already out of net revenue; subtracting their refunds again double-counts.
• Attributing a refund spike to the month's sales. Refunds lag orders; a strong sales month is often followed by a strong refund month mechanically.
• Ignoring the product dimension. A flat refund total can hide one new SKU refunding at five times the store average.

Where you see this in the app

The Total Refunds KPI, the Credit Notes detail widget, and the 30-day refunds alert metric.